Feeling conflicted and confused after an Iftar party.

Assalamualaikum ladies,

Please help me understand what happened.

When I moved overseas, I made new friends so, I was pleasantly surprised and happy when I received an invitation to an Iftar party by a Pakistani sister.

A lil bit background about my culture, we don’t do Iftar parties. Never! Ramadan for us means a month of ibadah, which means a quick iftar, pray maghrib, get ready for teraweeh (most women will go to the masjid near to them as well) and then to bed. Once, we get up for sahoor, we’re up and ready, our routine stays the same, we don’t stay up during the night etc. Basically no one invites you over to their house in Ramadan. Plus, most of our women work so they don’t have time to host you, they want to go to the masjid too.

So, imagine my excitement for this Iftar party! I arrived at this sister’s house and the host told me ’why I didn’t dress up’, I was wearing black abaya , like I would do if I went to a masjid, she said ‘it was a girls gathering so I could wear whatever I wanted?’ and take off my hijab?? Which I didn’t do btw, not my culture. 😅.

Anyway, all her friends are there, basically desis with a few reverts whom married her husband’s friends. Ladies there ranged between 20s to 50s, some wore hijab, some didn’t. Some were career women, some SAHM. There were like 20 plus women. There were kids too but they had activities to do so the women were hanging out by themselves without any disturbances.

When maghrib came, everyone broke their fast and ate the light snacks and went back to talking?

I kept looking and watching to see if anyone would go and pray, but no one did? Eventually, I told the host I wanted to pray and there was a prayer room in her house (all men are not in the house) , i did my prayer, came back and Isha came, told the revert next to me, that I was going to pray, she didn’t say anything, but I knew she was fasting so not her period.

I prayed Isha, came back. Ladies were enjoying themselves talking and eating. No one got up to pray. Not even a single one, because the prayer room was directly opposite the living room, so I could see if anyone was in there, no one. plus, everyone was talking in urdu so I had nothing to do except eat and observe what they were doing 😂.

It can’t be that all the ladies were on their periods. It was just weird for me, I felt weirdly uncomfortable even tho it wasn’t me who didn’t pray, but I felt so guilty. I just couldn’t understand. They missed maghrib prayers? why? They weren’t travelling, they lived nearby.

I can’t be too ungrateful because the foods were so tasty! Alhamdulilah, MashaAllah, Pakistani foods are just yummy!!!!🤤

Note: I did attend another Iftar party organised by my Arab friends after that, and as soon as we had some light snacks, we all went to pray maghrib, or took turns to pray since her room was small. We even prayed teraweeh too by ourselves before going back home.