"Can you please avoid the # during Ramadan? It looks like a waffle." Do you see food, everywhere? Are you watching your colleague's water bottle with desperate eyes? For those Muslims fasting through the month of Ramadan, keeping a sense of humour intact can be tricky. But yes, there's a hashtag for that.
#RamadanProblems now popping up on Twitter, Vine and Facebook feeds may not be able to slake thirst, keep your mind pure, or fill your belly, but the tagged comments, pictures and videos can at least offer some light relief for anyone making it through long summer days while fighting hunger pangs.
The hashtag covers comments about the predicaments that fasting during daylight hours can throw up – "I just don't want to look back and think: I could've eaten that" – to videos expressing the agony of watching the seconds tick by until the call for sunset prayers breaks the fast. Then there are the tweets about the gluttony that often follows: "RamadanProblems – the only time I have a date every night." Or my favourite – a picture of a bar of soap with a chunk bitten out with the caption: "When you hear the Maghrib Adhan while taking a shower."
There are reams of jokes based around the hungry hours that lie in between. One Instagram image reads: "Women belong in the kitchen. Men belong in the kitchen. Everyone belongs in the kitchen. Kitchen has food." Another tweet goes for the obvious: "These fasts are not very fast are they #RamadanProblems".
Along the way, there are images poking fun at how hard Muslims find it to follow the injunction to be better behaved in thought and deed during Ramadan (one image has the caption: "Since you can't engage in gossip, lust or obscenity during Ramadan, let's reconnect in August"). And some gentle fun is directed at the confusion about the specifics of Ramadan fasting in the wider population – such as a meme tagged "OMG you fast for 30 days straight? don't you die?". Non-Muslims have also joined in with their own funny tribulations of Ramadan, such as: "Trying to eat a massive meal before you meet your Muslim friends so you don't get hungry while you're with them".
Inevitably not everyone is happy with joking about the holy month in which Muslims believe the Qur'an was revealed, but for those taking part, the hashtag fosters a sense of community – or at least allows the sound of laughter to drown out their rumbling bellies for a few minutes.
