Young Belgian Students Fasting for Ramadan Raises Health and Educational Concerns

"Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam. It is normally mandatory for all Muslims from puberty to a certain age. For girls, it starts with the first menstrual cycle and for boys, it depends on the culture and different criteria. There are exceptions for the elderly, the sick, pregnant or breastfeeding women, for example," explains Mustapha Chairi, president of the Collective for Inclusion and Against Islamophobia in Belgium (CIIB), to the website La Dernière Heure. For boys, 13 years old is the required age. Except that it has been found that children under 13 are fasting.

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"Nothing obliges children to do it before puberty, but there is a kind of competition between children who derive a strong sense of pride from it. There are children who want to do it from the age of eight out of prestige," he continues. This observation is corroborated by Christine Toumpsin, director of a primary school in the free network and president of the college of directors of Catholic primary education. "We are seeing more and more students fasting, and at an earlier and earlier age, that is to say from the fourth grade in the case of my school," she explains. But this is starting to raise concerns among teachers.

"In my class, I have children, not teenagers. They sometimes seem too young to fast and it is the teachers and educators who are responsible for the children when they are at school. We sometimes fear that a child will faint in class. What should we do if a child doesn’t look well? Give him something to drink or leave him as is?" wonders an anonymous primary school teacher. To allay these concerns, Mustapha Chairi suggests: "Teachers feel responsible in case of a problem and force the children to drink or eat to avoid having problems. I think there is a happy medium to find to avoid this kind of situation. I think we shouldn’t prevent children from fasting if they want to and don’t have health problems," he explains.