# Transcript

NARRATOR:
It's early evening on the English south coast and five Muslim friends are meeting for a meal at Tuntun's Cafe. The restaurant is Bangladeshi Muslim, and the food is halal with no alcohol.
SERVER:
You like chicken roast?
FARIDA PANHWAR:
Yeah.
SERVER:
You like spice a little bit?
FARIDA PANHWAR:
Yeah, of course.

[LAUGHING]

I love all the spices.

[LAUGHING]

HAYDAR KARAMAN:
All right, yeah.
NARRATOR:
The friends are Muslims studying in Brighton. They're meeting to discuss the food and drink they eat during religious festivals, especially Ramadan.
LAILA KADIAWAL:
I see myself constantly evolving. So right from childhood, growing up in a small rural area of India, to then moving to England. Today I have very, very diverse groups of friends from many different religious backgrounds and ethnic backgrounds that has significantly had an impact on the way I see the world. So the extent to which I shape my drink or food choices, I think it has become more pluralistic.
I was wondering in Syria, what kind of food is very popular in festivals among Muslims?
RIAM ISMAEL:
Chicken and rice are very important ingredients of the dish during the festivals. And that is the aubergine, and then they have stuff with some rice and meat.
MOHAMMAD SAIDUR RAHMAN:
Yeah, really good meal.
RIAM ISMAEL:
And then they they boil it. Yeah, it's really nice.
Sometimes it may affect my choice of food, being a Muslim, but it won't affect the all the way I eat but I just exclude something. I think, as a Muslim, as what people think, I should exclude like drinking, but sometimes I drink.
HAYDAR KARAMAN:
It's quite interesting we always called Turkey as a Muslim country, but we have the national drink - the alcoholic drink - you know, raki.
FARIDA PANHWAR:
Pakistan is an Islamic country ...
HAYDAR KARAMAN:
Oh, so it is.
FARIDA PANHWAR:
...but we have the factories of the [INAUDIBLE], a very expensive wine goes to mostly exported to other countries.
LAILA KADIAWAL:
And if you look at Muslim literature, literature in Muslim societies, art and architecture, a lot of imagery in poetry and in architecture, and artistic expression are of wine.
FARIDA PANHWAR:
I have not taken wine never, not because Islam says don't take it, because I don't like it - or maybe I'm hesitant, because I was born with the feeling that this is something which is not suitable for the human being.
HAYDAR KARAMAN:
Actually, I drink alcohol. My parents drink alcohol. But the problem with that you should control yourself, and if you harm other people, you're not a good human. If you're not a good human, you can't be a part of the Muslim society.
MOHAMMAD SAIDUR RAHMAN:
My country's experience is, in Ramadan Muslims, the whole day, don't eat anything. And before that if the whole streets are full of food, and all are mostly fried. They don't care about health.
FARIDA PANHWAR:
Yes, not at all.
MOHAMMAD SAIDUR RAHMAN:
They don't care about anything. Lots of sweets available, lots of fried things available, and they start with fried things.
To be true, I'm a liberal Muslim. I believe in the philosophies of Islam, rather than the practice that we do today. So in that sense, halal or haram is not very much a big issues to me. I practice healthy eating, whether it is halal or haram, whether it is vegan or non-vegan, whether it is vegetarian or non-vegetarian.
LAILA KADIAWAL:
In my country ...
MOHAMMAD SAIDUR RAHMAN:
True, our country ... yes.
FARIDA PANHWAR:
...Ramadan means pakora or samosas. It's compulsory. Without pakoras and samosas, there isn't any Ramadan.
LAILA KADIAWAL:
Is it compulsory, you mean by religion, or as ...
FARIDA PANHWAR:
No, no, no ...
MOHAMMAD SAIDUR RAHMAN:
No.
FARIDA PANHWAR:
It's a tradition.
MOHAMMAD SAIDUR RAHMAN:
No, it's not that ... yes.
FARIDA PANHWAR:
You know, food is more related to tradition, rather than religion. So it's a culture, rather then the ...
MOHAMMAD SAIDUR RAHMAN:
Within our culture, yes.
LAILA KADIAWAL:
And with each other.
MOHAMMAD SAIDUR RAHMAN:
[INAUDIBLE].
LAILA KADIAWAL:
So has practice of Ramadan changed for you, Riam, after coming to Brighton?
RIAM ISMAEL:
Not the practice, but the feeling of Ramadan, because before I came here I didn't fast for like a few years. I used to fast when I was a child, because I lived in a different city. But the whole place would have that sense of Ramadan and that, in the time of it. And then here, I didn't know when it's start to ...
FARIDA PANHWAR:
I don't feel that majority of people are observing the Ramadan. Rather they come for the food, what I saw in Brighton, you know ... it's here at least. But in Pakistan, it's compulsory. You should be fasting.
LAILA KADIAWAL:
And how about for you? Like how is the Ramadan experience different for you from Turkey?
HAYDAR KARAMAN:
You know, in Turkey it's not compulsory. Ramadan is all about the feeling.
RIAM ISMAEL:
I stopped fasting, but I still like this feeling, or this time. Because, for me, it's related to my childhood.
FARIDA PANHWAR:
In my home, in Pakistan, everybody says why you are not praying? Why you are not fasting? It is something awkward, you know? And here, nobody asks that you are fasting or not. So although I fast, I go into the mosque, but not that much punctual, not that much as I was forced there in Pakistan to do it, whether I like it or I don't like it. But here, I'm more liberal to do it, or sometime I try to make the God happy, I fast.
MOHAMMAD SAIDUR RAHMAN:
Whether you're agree or not, nowadays what I feel and what I think that the philosophical sides of the Ramadan has been omitted completely.
FARIDA PANHWAR:
Very ... yes.
MOHAMMAD SAIDUR RAHMAN:
Because Ramadan is not fasting, but it is controlling yourselves - all five senses should be controlled. So people have followed in these parts, and only have consented at all the eating kind of things.
FARIDA PANHWAR:
Yeah, emphasis is on the food.
MOHAMMAD SAIDUR RAHMAN:
It's on food like this. So this Ramadan, now it is the question whether you're fasting or not.
LAILA KADIAWAL:
When I was in my country, living in the Muslim communities, the whole concept of we have to have halal, for we have to have ... that emphasis on the outer expressions of faith, wasn't as pronounced as I see here in the UK. The emphasis on externalities, like whether you wear a hijab, whether you fast, ...
MOHAMMAD SAIDUR RAHMAN:
I completely agree, yeah.
LAILA KADIAWAL:
... whether you have halal food is different from my lived experience of Muslim in, actually, in a country where there is high concentration of Muslims.