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Mehruddin is a young married man - a carpenter by trade. As many young Indian Muslim tradespeople do, he normally works in 'the Gulf' (Persian Gulf states like Saudi, UAE & Bahrain). There the salaries are considerably better than can be had in India, so even though they're often treated as second-class citizens, they go and work for years, faithfully sending money back to their families in India.

A year ago Mehruddin's mother 'called' him to return to Delhi to help arrange the weddings of two of his younger siblings. In Indian culture it's the wider family's responsibility to arrange for the marriage of all the children (self-arranged "love marriages" are still widely seen as scandalous). In addition, it's not really an option to disobey one's parents, so a little unwillingly, Mehruddin came back. In the last year he as in fact managed to arrange his siblings weddings, but has since found it hard to get reasonably paying carpentry work so ... you guessed it, next month he's back to Dubai. The amazing thing is he and the thousands of others who do this go without their wives and kids, who stay behind at his family's home.

Mehruddin likes Ramadan, because some people (50% he says) at least live more righteously, less lying & cheating etc during the month. Despite this he himself doesn't fast.

Please pray for ...

- His safe return to Dubai

- The welfare of his wife and children while he's away

Did you know ...

The research report dated October 2009 states:

A comprehensive demographic study of more than 200 countries finds that there are 1.57 billion Muslims of all ages living in the world today, representing 23% of an estimated 2009 world population of 6.8 billion.

While Muslims are found on all five inhabited continents, more than 60% of the global Muslim population is in Asia and about 20% is in the Middle East and North Africa. However, the Middle East-North Africa region has the highest percentage of Muslim-majority countries. Indeed, more than half of the 20 countries and territories in that region have populations that are approximately 95% Muslim or greater.

[see http://pewforum.org/uploadedfiles/Topics/Demographics/Muslimpopulation.pdf, Executive Summary, page 1]

World Muslim Population by percentage – for details see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Muslim_population

[Servants works in a number of Islamic settings, including India and Indonesia. This month is the month of Ramadan (also known as Ramazan), the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, which lasts about 30 days. It is a month of fasting, in which participating Muslims refrain from eating and drinking during daylight hours and is intended to teach Muslims about patience, spirituality, humility and submissiveness to God. Each day this month we will be putting reflections, stories, and information about Islam on this website to help you learn more and pray for our Muslim friends.]