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It's Ramadan again, and that means Utah Muslims are joining others around the world in observing the holiest month of the year, a season of sacrifice and brotherhood.
From dawn until after sunset each day, Muslims fast from food and drink and abstain from backbiting, lies, cheating, gambling and other temptations, said Iqbal Hossain, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Salt Lake.
The society has two mosques, Khadeeja in West Valley City and Al-Noor in Salt Lake City, as well as affiliated Islamic centers in Logan, Layton and Ogden.
The majority of the Salt Lake Valley's estimated 25,000 Muslims worship at one of the society's mosques.
Fasting during Ramadan is prescribed in the Koran, Hossain said. "God has asked us to do it. We must do it."
Benefits are many, he said. "It teaches us patience and maybe a little bit of suffering, hunger and thirst. But yet we try to follow the commandment of God."
The idea, Hossain said, is that abstaining from bad behavior and acting more charitably should become year-round habits.
"Ramadan is a monthlong training of self-purification, of achieving greater spirituality and getting closer to God. Hopefully this will translate to the rest of our lives."
Shuaib-ud Din, imam at the Utah Islamic Center in Sandy, said Ramadan also is holy because it was the month in which the first verses of the Koran were revealed to the Prophet Muhammad.
"God," he noted, "has determined this month to be the one month for him."
Besides fasting, community is a focus of Ramadan.
Many Muslims invite friends or go to friends' houses for iftar (the meal at the end of each day's fast). And the mosques make a point of having food for iftar.
Both the Islamic Society of Greater Salt Lake and the Utah Islamic Center plan a community iftar once during Ramadan.
Many Muslims return to the faith during this period. "At least in this one month," Din said, "a lot of people who never come to the mosque start coming to the mosque."
Din said that after the nightly prayer during Ramadan, at 9:55 p.m., he will recite from the Koran. By month's end, he added, the entire book will have been recited out loud in the Sandy mosque.
Hossain, a management consultant for the state who also teaches criminology at the University of Utah, said he makes a point to travel from his Draper home to the West Valley City mosque for the nightly prayers more often during Ramadan.
Friday prayers also draw more worshippers during Ramadan.
Muslims are free to pray five times a day in their homes or workplaces rather than at the mosque, but the Friday evening prayer is the one time Muslim men are mandated to pray at the mosque. Women are welcome, but not required to attend the communal Friday prayers.
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Ramadan is the holiest month of the Islamic calendar, one in which Muslims fast from food, drink, bad habits, worldly temptations and sensual activities from dawn until after sunset each day.
Besides growing spiritually, Muslims also concentrate on brotherhood and community by often sharing iftar, the Arabic word for the meal that breaks the fast each evening.
The new moon of the ninth month signals the beginning of Ramadan. While many Muslims use astrological data to tell them when Ramadan begins -- putting the start this year on Aug. 22 and the end on Sept. 20 -- others use that data as well as their own observations of the moon. When they can see the crescent moon that follows the "birth" of the new moon, Ramadan begins.
The Islamic Society of Greater Salt Lake will host a community iftar Aug. 29 at Khadeeja mosque in West Valley City. The Utah Islamic Center in Sandy plans a community iftar Sept. 3.