Zabiha News

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“Increasingly, iftar in Turkey – and in other parts of the Muslim world – has moved from being a family affair to an important economic and social statement. Businesses and other organizations now host lavish iftar dinners, using them as a kind of public relations tool and as a way, some critics charge, of showing off. Observers in Turkey say the rise of the corporate iftar dinner is another example of the rising visibility of religion in public life and of an increasingly bourgeois Islamic elite…

“The religiously conservative and newly urbanized middle classes and upper middle classes have given increased importance to the iftar dinner, and have influenced the established middle classes,” says Nilufer Narli, a sociologist at Istanbul’s Bahcesehir University.

“Now these dinners are becoming more and more public and chic. It’s becoming something that’s kind of fashionable – almost every company or organization now gives one. It’s the new thing.”

In Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for example, an increasing number of luxury hotels now erect iftar tents, where guests can break their fast (at least those who are actually fasting) with food from huge buffet tables.

In Cairo, people now flock to exclusive restaurants, clubs and hotels to break their fast as well as to see and be seen, spending on one dinner what the average Egyptian earns in two weeks.

In India, local media reported that many of the iftar dinner parties hosted by top politicians have been canceled out of respect for the millions of people displaced by flooding.

Some of the politicians, the Times of India reported, were busy helping with relief efforts instead. One former minister canceled his iftar dinner party and said he was sending the money that would have been spent on the dinner to support relief efforts.

In Islamabad, Pakistan, the Indian High Commission canceled its Sept. 25 iftar dinner in the wake of Saturday’s Marriott hotel attack – which occurred during an iftar dinner event at the hotel.

The High Commission issued a statement saying that “in solidarity with our friends in Pakistan, whose grief we share, we are calling off the reception.”