By Bassam Tariq
It is the 27th night of Ramadan and we are locked in. The Mohammad Mosque is located in the hard streets of Hartford, Connecticut. The cops have already pulled up twice, once to stop a fight and the second time to stop a rape. No joke. So we stay put inside and try to make the best of the night that’s ahead.
Tonight is the night where many Muslims will stay up searching for what might be the most important moment of their entire lives. It is believed to be the night when the first verses of the Qur’an were revealed -Laylat al-Qadr (The Night of Qadr). There is no direct translation of the Arabic word Qadr, but there are those words that come close to it – i.e.: Destiny, Power, Measures, Decree, etc. It is considered the most blessed night, but no one knows the exact night it is – only that it behooves us to look for it in the last third of Ramadan. That is why there is a search for it in the last ten days of Ramadan and more specifically a search from sundown till sunrise. As the verses revealed in the Qur’an state: “it is all peace, until the rise of dawn.” So we search till daybreak.
