For six years, Sam Sman Mohammed lived the life of a university student in Cairo, Egypt’s sprawling capital.
He studied Islam and learned Arabic among people he found to be essentially no different than the Cambodian Chams he had grown up with.
He made the pilgrimage to Mecca with people who read the same holy book, the Koran, as he did. And he saw that Ramadan, Islam’s fasting month, was observed the same way in the Middle East as it was in his home village in Cambodia.
When he returned to Cambodia in 1969, completing a scholarship provided by then-Prince Norodom Sihanouk, he encountered civil war.
Later, the harsh Khmer Rouge regime forbade all religions and cracked down hard when many Chams, believed to be descendants of an ancient empire once based in what is now Vietnam, refused to give up their traditions.
As a teacher and a Cham, Sam Sman Mohammad was thrown in a Khmer Rouge jail for one year, awaiting his execution until he was freed by Vietnamese troops in 1979.
“People were not allowed to gather during Pol Pot,” he said. “We had to eat whenever they told us to, so we could not fast. They killed those who prayed.”
In those years, Nak Abdul Raman would pray secretly as he was forced to work in the fields, remembering Muslim holidays only in his mind, never daring to worship in public with his fellow Chams.
“We had to celebrate Ramadan individually,” he said. “We couldn’t do the diet period. We were already very weak.”
These days, Sam Sman Mohammed, now the chairman of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak mosque, and Nak Abdul Raman, now a doctor in Kompong Cham, can fast and pray together, without fear, during the holy month of Ramadan, which ended Tuesday.
After suffering under the Khmer Rouge—about 70,000 Chams died during the regime—and encountering only limited religious freedom during the 1980s, the Cham minority population has grown to about 500,000, or 2 percent of the nation’s population, during the 1990s.
“Pol Pot wanted to destroy our traditions,” Sam Sman Mohammed said. Just two of his 13 relatives survived the Khmer Rouge, he said. “Many of our older, educated people died, hurting our religion.”
Mosques were destroyed in the 1970s. But many have been resurrected since the early 1990s, some with the financial help of Islamic organizations in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.
In Chrang Chamreh, on National Road 5 north of Phnom Penh, several mosques dot the roadside. More than 1,000 Cham families live in the area, according to Kamaruddin Yusef, Cambodian Islam’s supreme leader.
At the crowded Nourn Na Im mosque at kilometer 8 last week, men and boys removed their sandals at the back of the mosque before entering a small water house.
“We must wash our ears, hands, face and feet before entering the mosque. This is according to the Koran,” said Abdul Karim, before heading in for the noon prayer.
During Ramadan, which commemorates the month in which the Koran was revealed to Islam’s founder, Mohammed, men pray five times a day, facing west toward the holy site of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
Adults and adolescents are required to refrain from eating during daylight hours, and must also try to give charity to the poor. Muslims who are sick, old or who have traveled a long way can be exempt from fasting.
“Ramadan means patience,” said Seur Li, the chairman of the Nourussalam Mosque on Route 5. “During the diet period, people will understand the difficulty of hunger, so that they will feel sympathy for the poor.”
When the sun sets, families gather for the evening meal, eating fish, chicken or beef, but staying away from pork and alcohol. Before sunrise, sometimes as early as 3 am, Muslims have sahur, the predawn meal.
Many Chams reduce their workload during Ramadan to save energy. But school and work continues, just as it does for other Cambodians, said Zachariah Adam, undersecretary of state of the Ministry of Cults and Religion.
“I haven’t eaten since 4:30 am, but I’m used to this,” Mat Ly Sakrin, a 23-year-old guard at the Om Alkara Mosque in Kandal province, said last week. “It’s no problem.”
With the fasting period over, a one-day celebration of Eid Al-Fitr was held Wednesday, Kamaruddin Yusef said. Usually, a feast is held, and a cow is occasionally butchered and distributed to poor villagers. Chams also remember deceased relatives and visit neighbors, sometimes asking for forgiveness and resolving disputes.
It’s the time, as Abdul Karim said, that Chams have finished their fasting period, “and have the freedom to eat.”
