I’m a woman who overheats really easily and I work at a bakery (my need for free good coffee overwhelmed my need for temperature stability when choosing a job), so I wear loose dark-colored linen shorts year round. They come to a couple of inches above my knees and I don’t think they could be considered sexy by anyone without a very specific fetish- I feel very much like a mailman wearing them (that’s intentional, I’m generally a pretty modest dresser).
One of our regular customers is an imam, and a lot of my coworkers are nominally Muslim, to the point that they feel weird/guilty when he comes in, but I was raised Catholic, so I don’t mind. He’s a good guy, and we chat sometimes, including about religious guidelines (I’m the kind of asshole who likes to have opinions about things in the Quran without being able to read Arabic, and he takes that about as well as a reform rabbi, plus I am delicate about how I phrase things).
Summer before last, I was in the middle of losing ten kilos because of the heat. I couldn’t keep meals down and basically only wanted to eat cucumbers and watermelon, but I still had to work. I asked him about what would happen to Muslims with my heat tolerance, and he laughed a little and said that it was like asking what happens to diabetics during Ramadan. Obviously there can be medical exceptions to all of the rules and anyone could see from several meters away that I was not handling the heat well.
I’ll grant you, this guy is a liberal imam living in Germany, but it is reasonable that a major world religion not adopt strict environmental regulations that endanger their believers.
That imam has got it right. Anyone who has a medical issue where they have to take something orally is exempt from fasting.
People overcomplicate things, when in reality it’s all about doing what you can. Even for something that’s as forbidden as eating pork; if you’re starving in the middle of a savanna and the only thing you can find to eat is a wild boar you managed to kill, go for it. Doing the basic survival thing always comes first.
Yeah, it’s the same reason my very devout Catholic grandmother didn’t feel guilty about taking medication before mass and still having communion. Reasonable people interpret religious texts reasonably.
I’m a woman who overheats really easily and I work at a bakery (my need for free good coffee overwhelmed my need for temperature stability when choosing a job), so I wear loose dark-colored linen shorts year round. They come to a couple of inches above my knees and I don’t think they could be considered sexy by anyone without a very specific fetish- I feel very much like a mailman wearing them (that’s intentional, I’m generally a pretty modest dresser).
One of our regular customers is an imam, and a lot of my coworkers are nominally Muslim, to the point that they feel weird/guilty when he comes in, but I was raised Catholic, so I don’t mind. He’s a good guy, and we chat sometimes, including about religious guidelines (I’m the kind of asshole who likes to have opinions about things in the Quran without being able to read Arabic, and he takes that about as well as a reform rabbi, plus I am delicate about how I phrase things).
Summer before last, I was in the middle of losing ten kilos because of the heat. I couldn’t keep meals down and basically only wanted to eat cucumbers and watermelon, but I still had to work. I asked him about what would happen to Muslims with my heat tolerance, and he laughed a little and said that it was like asking what happens to diabetics during Ramadan. Obviously there can be medical exceptions to all of the rules and anyone could see from several meters away that I was not handling the heat well.
I’ll grant you, this guy is a liberal imam living in Germany, but it is reasonable that a major world religion not adopt strict environmental regulations that endanger their believers.
That imam has got it right. Anyone who has a medical issue where they have to take something orally is exempt from fasting.
People overcomplicate things, when in reality it’s all about doing what you can. Even for something that’s as forbidden as eating pork; if you’re starving in the middle of a savanna and the only thing you can find to eat is a wild boar you managed to kill, go for it. Doing the basic survival thing always comes first.
Yeah, it’s the same reason my very devout Catholic grandmother didn’t feel guilty about taking medication before mass and still having communion. Reasonable people interpret religious texts reasonably.