What I learned about Islam during Lent

Stephen Adubato / Wall Street Journal

Ramadan ends this week with the sighting of the new crescent moon, and the occasion is an opportunity to think about Islam, its relation to other religions, and the place Muslims are coming to occupy in the U.S.

Lent, the Christian season of penance, and Ramadan, a Muslim time of fasting, coincide every few decades (the last time was in 1993), and this year Ramadan began the evening before Ash Wednesday.

Islam is broadly misunderstood in the West, with the political realm often reducing it to simplistic platitudes. Although I am a Christian and strongly believe Jesus is the son of God, I’ve always esteemed my Muslim friends. What I’ve learned from them during this shared season of penitence has strengthened my conviction that non-Muslims need to learn about Islam and get beyond the stereotypes and misconceptions of both the left and right.

Roman Catholics typically abstain from meat on Fridays during Lent, eat only one meal and two small snacks on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and give up the indulgence of their choice during the 40-day season, while Eastern Catholics and Orthodox give up meat, dairy and wine for all 40 days. When I explained this to a Muslim friend, he replied that it “kinda sounds like diet Ramadan”—which demands that Muslims go without food or drink from sunup to sundown.

There’s something valuable in the Christian practice of letting people determine their Lenten sacrifices. Turning down the volume on legalism lets us enter the interior experience of the season—helping it become a space for the encounter of God and the self.

Yet there’s something compelling about Muslims’ making harder sacrifices in the midst of our instinct-driven, self-indulgent culture. I wish the Christian observance of Lent had the communal dimension Ramadan has, with the breaking of the Muslim fast almost always done together at the mosque, at home or in restaurants.

I’ve spent time in the past few weeks in a Yemeni café down the block from me in Brooklyn, N.Y. The customers—from those in their 20s to elders—and even the baristas will stop mid-conversation or while working to pray in the backroom when the hour strikes. This continues during Ramadan, even during the day, and the staff allows patrons to socialize or do work even if they don’t order anything.

That Muslims will often stop wherever they are to pray when the hour calls for it is a striking reminder that every part of our day—from sipping coffee to sending an email or talking to friends—can be offered for the glory of the most high. My neighborhood barber, who quietly says “Bismillah,” meaning “in the name of God,” before putting the buzzer to my head, is keenly aware of this.

While Christians generally believe there are boundaries between the sacred and secular, between God and Caesar, that distinction is foreign to Islam. And this Islamic belief that God encompasses every aspect of earthly life proves both a strength and a weakness. It can bring someone to recognize the divine is present in even the most mundane reality, but it can also incite people too easily to commit acts of violence in God’s name.

It is mistaken to say that violence committed in the name of this insight has nothing to do with Islam, just as it is wrong to think of Islam as an inherently violent religion. Much of Islamic extremism is a reaction to what Muslims perceive as the stifling secularism they encounter in Western countries.

Most discourse on Islam among non-Muslims is driven by reductive platitudes. There’s something deceptive about the left’s tendency to play down the elements of Islam that don’t mesh well with Western humanist values and to proclaim solidarity with Muslims as an oppressed minority group. Recent controversies over gender ideology in the curriculum in Muslim-majority school districts have revealed that liberals are quick to drop the banner of fighting Islamophobia as soon as they discover that Islam is a religion—and not just an identity category—with moral values that clash with their own. Meanwhile the categorical skepticism that some conservatives express toward Islam is unfair and counterproductive.

Beyond politics, Christians—progressive and conservative alike—should learn more about Islam and look for ways to share our paths toward God. As my experience over the past few weeks has shown, we can benefit from such exchanges without having to gloss over or ignore our differences. Coming together to explain our faiths and to find unity amid our differences can set an example sorely needed by an American society that seems to grow only more polarized and secular.

*Mr. Adubato is an associate editor of Compact, an adjunct professor of philosophy and religion at Seton Hall University, and a founding editor of the website Cracks in Postmodernity.