Younes Abdullah, 33, is eating lunch in public during Ramadan for the first time in his life. Abdullah and his family escaped the IS group when they left home and ran towards the Iraqi pro-government forces – he was shot in the process but escaped with his life.
“In the past, I always used to fast but I’m not so keen on it anymore,” he told NIQASH.” I feel like I want to show that I am not obeying religious rituals anymore and I do not think anybody around here would blame me. Everyone knows what the extremists did to us in the name of what they said was Islam. Everybody also knows that the moderate clerics just stood by, observing passively, and said nothing about what was going on.”
Abdullah raises a spoon to his mouth. “If I had done this during Ramadan, the IS group would have cut off my head,” he adds.
The Mosul local is eating lunch at the Najim restaurant in the northern Majmouah-Thaqafiyah neighbourhood. The fact that the restaurant was even open is also a strange new phenomenon for the city. Before June 2014 when the IS group took over, the Iraqi government allowed only three or four restaurants in the centre of the city to open during the day in Ramadan.
They could open but only if they put a curtain over the front of the restaurant to hide the diners inside, out of respect for the fasting people outside, who shouldn’t see them eating.
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