Not just another Ramadan ritual story

Ramadan began yesterday, and Mollie at GetReligion points us to a good take on the annual Muslim holiday story. It’s from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. The focus is the hafiz, the young reciter of the Quran:

Like the imam before them, the boys at Masjid Al-Huda in Greenfield are working to “make hifz,” to memorize and recite the Muslim holy book in its entirety.

One who succeeds will become a hafiz, a guardian of the faith, whose job it is to preserve the Qur’an - not on the printed page, but in his heart and mind.

“He is preserving the word of God,” said Al-Huda Imam Noman Hussain, a Chicago-born hafiz who at 22 has mastered the Qur’an in all 10 Arabic dialects.

Read the rest here.