A Facebook friend currently living in Malaysia has had awesomely tacky Facebook status reports about Ramadan lately. “Benefits of Ramadan: no lines at lunch.” During the Ramadan fast, Muslims are not permitted to eat from dawn until dusk. As THIS article from the New York Times observes, Ramadan presents some interesting difficulties for Muslims living in the United States.

The article focuses on a high school in Michigan where many Muslim students attend. One of the challenges presented by Ramadan is that approximately one-third of the football team is fasting right now at Fordson High School. Because of the excessive heat and the lack of food, football practice in the sun would be extremely dangerous for the Muslim players on the football team.

The coach at the 90% Muslim high school is extremely flexible and has moved his “grueling double practices” to a night shift. Instead of practicing during the day during Ramadan, the football players practice between the hours of four and eleven. SInce the community where Fordson High School is located is predominantly Muslim, the rival high school also practices at night, which is unusual in the world of high school sports, where most practices are during the day time. Fordson High School will switch to some day practices next week, but the players will have to be careful to adhere to the religious rules of Ramadan. That said, as the New York TImes observes, the opening day of the football season in Dearborn will force a few of the team’s football players to break their fasts so they will be strong enough to play.

The town of Dearborn and its football community are the subject of a forthcoming documentary entitled: Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football. According to the documentary-maker, football is really important to the largely Muslim community, Dearborn, which has ironically been the target of anti-Muslim groups and politicians who claim that Dearborn is operated under Islamic law.

It seems as if Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football is intended to disabuse the public of some of the negative connotations of Muslims that arose after 9-11. The idea seems to be that the students and players are the same the students and players in any community in the United States, but that the religious backdrop is different. Director Rashid Gazi describes Dearborn as, “this all-American story is set in an area with hijabs, mosques and baklava rather than baseball caps, churches and apple pie.”