Islam In America

Living in America, I came to understand the difficulties of practicing Islam in urban life. There is not enough time to pray five times a day because most of the time I spend is in school. For example, waking up at 7 a.m. to get ready and go to school until 3 pm. Also, there are no facilities in high school where you can pray during lunch time or breaks to pray unlike in rural areas of Bangladesh. There are other challenges such as types of food that are served in the school cafeteria. I remember in my high school I could not eat lunch because I was not aware of the different types of food and I had to be careful to stick to my Islamic custom when consuming food. As a muslim there are many laws and regulations that I have to follow when consuming
foods because there are many foods that are haram (forbidden by Islamic law). According the book Halal Food Production “Meat is the most strictly regulated of the food groups. Not only are blood, pork, … those immolated to other than God strongly prohibited, it is also required that halal animals be slaughtered while pronouncing the name of God at the time of slaughter.”( Riaz & Chaudry 2003, P.10-11) As Riaz and Chaudry mention in the book I am not allowed to eat foods that contained pork, meat that were not slaughter by the name of Allah. If there are foods that might not be haram like chicken, but not knowing for sure prevented me to eating them. Although high school was challenging, my culture heavily impacted my college experience.