Rabat – Muslims in the Netherlands will officially observe the first day of Ramadan 2025 on Saturday, March 1st.
Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. This month, the Muslims of dawn do without sunset when they eat, drink, smoke and sexual relationships from dawn.
The month is an opportunity for Muslims, Allah through increased prayers to read the Koran and do good deeds.
The Netherlands house an important Muslim community that corresponds to around five percent of the country’s population of 17.1 million inhabitants. Islam is the second largest religion in the country after Christianity.
A large part of this community is Moroccan because the Netherlands is one of the top locations for the North African diaspora. According to the Statistica, 419,300,000 Moroccan citizens were in the Netherlands in 2022.
For this reason, Ramadan is a time when Moroccan culture in the European country really shines. Moroccans gather in friends and family houses for community -oftars, where they break fasting with data, “Harira”, “Mssmen” and other Moroccan delicacies, which bring a foretaste of at home.
Muslims gather not only in the Moroccan communities, but also in the Netherlands this month to strengthen the relationships of the community, either by organizing Iftars in their houses or the visitors of community -fox in mosques and cultural centers.
In the meantime, Muslims go to additional municipal prayers, including Taraweeh, in mosques.
Jihaan, a Muslim student from Indonesia, informed her experiences with spending Ramadan in the Netherlands in a student blog.
“One of the highlights of my time in the Netherlands was to experience Ramadan here. I was lucky enough to break the fast with people in my community, and even opened my own home to organize a meeting for people to break down their fasting, ”said the university student.
