On a sunny Saturday morning during the closing decade of the Twentieth Century, a young boy joined his team members for a game of soccer. An Indian woman watched from the sidelines, as her son contributed to his team’s ability to work the ball closer to the goal. A legal document had granted to that woman her right to witness her son’s soccer skills on that morning. The woman’s lawyer, and the lawyer for her husband, had had to overcome several unexpected problems when creating that document.

The largest problem formerly facing the couple’s lawyers had concerned the Muslim holiday of Ramadan. When the Indian woman and her husband had divorced, they had had to establish who would have custody of their son. As in most divorce cases, both parents wanted to spend at least some time with the boy every year. For that reason, the lawyers had had to come up with a plan for a sharing of custody.

The father had requested to have his son on particular holidays. Most specifically, he had asked to have custody of the boy during Ramadan. The lawyers thus needed to draw up a legal document that would spell out the period during which the boy would enjoy the fasting month of Ramadan with his father.

As the lawyers initiated their efforts to make that document, they knew little about the Ramadan timetable. The Muslim month of fasting, like all Muslim holidays, has a fixed date on the Muslim calendar. The Muslim calendar, however, is a lunar calendar. For that reason, the date for each Muslim holiday changes from year to year on the 365 day calendar used in western societies. Look how that fact affected the creation of a legal document.

The lawyers found that the husband might on one year have his son during the month of December. During those short winter days, the father could encourage his son to spend part of the long nights in prayer and meditation. Yet the father could not always hope for such long nights during Ramadan. Sometimes the man’s son would stay with his father during the summer. Then the father might plan to have them pray and meditate in a shady spot, away from the sun.

As the boy got older, the father would no doubt acquaint him with a second aspect of the Ramadan timetable. Since the holiday changes its exact time from year to year, the time for fasting changes from year to year. During the month of Ramadan, an adult Muslim does without both food and drink from the appearance of the sun’s first rays until the first star glows in the evening sky.

The teaching of the restrictions associated with Ramadan had not of course been the responsibility of the lawyers. The boy’s father had planned to take on that responsibility. That was why he had asked to have his son during Ramadan. That was why the lawyers had had to offer a great many details, concerning the time when the son would join his father each year.

On that sunny Saturday morning, the prescribed twenty-eight days of fasting did not loom as an event in the near future. Neither had such fasting been part of an event in the recent past. The mother thus felt free to enjoy her son’s soccer game.