BAGHDAD — On Saturday, the holy month of Ramadan began on the same day in Iraq for both Sunnis and Shiites, the first time that has happened in 10 years.
For a country riven by sectarian strife, and plagued by bombings aimed at provoking more such warfare, that was a welcome omen.
That portent of a religious reconciliation does not include secular or Christian Iraqis, however, for whom this Ramadan does not augur so well. For the first time, the government has instituted a series of decrees closing nearly all restaurants for the next month during the daylight hours of the Ramadan fast.
All month, from sunup to sundown, Muslims are expected to refrain from food and drink, even water.
Now even those seen smoking on the streets will be subject to arrest, according to the new decree issued by the Ministry of Interior. Bars and liquor stores were ordered to close completely for the whole month, also for the first time.
Ramadan begins after the waxing crescent moon first comes into view, which, according to astronomical calculations, happened in Baghdad at precisely 6:42 p.m. on Friday.
By Islamic tradition, however, the ninth month in the Islamic calendar begins only after religious authorities see the crescent with their own eyes. When Ramadan comes in summer, as this year, the sliver of the waxing moon is invisible for most of the day, and in Baghdad it sets just a half hour after dark, making it an elusive target in the often sandy haze along the horizon.
To make matters more difficult, Shiite religious leaders say they must spot that first crescent with the naked eye. Sunnis allow themselves the aid of binoculars or a telescope, which often gives the Sunni Ramadan a full day’s jump on the Shiite observance.
This year, Iraq’s Sunnis took their cue from Abdul al-Ghafor al-Samaraie, head of the Sunni Endowment, who spotted it on Friday with the unaided eye. “This will unite the religious messages of our two sects and is a good sign,” he said.
Iraq’s Shiites begin observing Ramadan when the howza, the committee of their top ayatollahs, announces that the moon has been spotted. That word came many hours after sunset on Friday, catching many Shiites asleep and unprepared for a predawn breakfast on Saturday.
Since the war began, and with it the widespread arrival of cellphones, Iraqis have grown accustomed to sending congratulatory text messages to one another by the dozens when Ramadan is announced.
Many of the messages read like greeting cards, and some even strike a conciliatory note:
While Ramadan is at our doors,
Let us review the reasons
We became as strangers,
And live peacefully as friends.
The texts serve a practical function, too, warning those who might be asleep or not watching the news that they needed to get up before sunrise to have an early breakfast, girding themselves for the daylong fast ahead.
But with staggered starts for Ramadan, the texts became an annoyance if they arrived on the wrong day. In mixed areas there were arguments over eating and drinking in public. The biggest problem, though, was the Id al-Fitr feast at the end of the month. It is the biggest holiday of the Muslim calendar, and sheep are slaughtered in the streets, a distressing sight to those still fasting.
It would be as if groups in a largely Christian country could not agree about whether it was Dec. 24 or Dec. 25 when everything should grind to a halt.
Christians are exempt from many of the laws imposing Ramadan strictures, but not the ban on alcohol sales. Many of Iraq’s secular-minded citizens were also alarmed, however.
“Why can’t I practice my freedom in this country?” said Ahmed Abd, 42. “If I smoke in the streets, whose fast does it hurt? Why shouldn’t I drink water when I’m thirsty in such weather? Why should I hide like a criminal if I want to have a sandwich?” In a country rife with conspiracy theories, some Iraqis also suspected the simultaneous Ramadan celebrations were fixed for political reasons.
“I think it is an attempt by Maliki to get as many voters as he can,” said Nazar al-Azzawi, 43, a Sunni businessman in Adhamiya, referring to the Shiite prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. “He wants to send a message that national reconciliation is a success and there is no sectarianism.”
That is a conclusion Mr. Azzawi bitterly disagreed with. “The dead will never be alive again,” he said.
Others thought that even if the howza’s lunar observations were more aspirational than astronomical, it was only for the best. “I think the howza announced it to avoid sectarian strife,” said Hussein al-Ameri, a university professor in Karbala. “It recognizes that its job is to bring Iraqis together.”
Another Iraqi tradition in recent years has been an increase in violence during Ramadan, and Iraqi security forces planned to tighten security, particularly after last week’s bombings. The first day passed relatively quietly in Baghdad; a homemade bomb exploded on Saturday, wounding two civilians, and two Iraqi soldiers were killed when gunmen using silencers ambushed them at a checkpoint in Adhamiya before dawn.
In Mosul, however, the police said five insurgent attacks left nine people dead, including the owner of a liquor store that was still open despite the new rules.
And Iraqis continued to debate last Wednesday’s suicide truck bombings, which killed 95 people and wounded 1,200 at the Foreign and Finance Ministries.
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari blamed members of Iraq’s security forces, who he said must have helped the bombers enter an area where trucks are prohibited. “There had to be technical and logistical assistance, and it appears that governmental security agents were coordinating with them too,” he said Saturday.
This is also one of the hottest Ramadans in many years, with temperatures still as high as 120 degrees, and there are 13 hours of daylight. The last thing most of Iraq’s exhausted fasters will want, plagued as they are with poor electric and water supplies, is more trouble.
In Diyala Province, where sectarian conflict remains particularly bad, Muhammad Jameel, 24, was hopeful. He is a tabal, one of a troop of men who walk the streets in the predawn darkness beating large drums to warn that sunrise is only a breakfast away. “I’m happy to see this,” he said. “Tomorrow morning I’ll beat my drum loudly to make Sunni neighbors as well as Shiites hear it and wake up together.”
Late on Saturday, the Iraqi Army arrested five tabal drummers in Adhamiya and charged them with the killings of the two soldiers. Because of the midnight to 4 a.m. curfew in that neighborhood, the drummers were the only residents out before dawn.
Reporting was contributed by Abeer Mohammed, Riyadh Mohammed and Duraid Adnan from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Adhamiya and Diyala.
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