Fordson

The film Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football and The American Dream was an eye opening film for me. I learned a lot about the Islamic faith and the culture Muslims have. The movie was about a community in Dearborn, MI that is predominately Arab-American and the local Fordson High Schools football team. The football team is preparing for their cross-town rivalry game that is during Ramadan.  This film opened my eyes to a culture that I really did not know that much about and I couldn’t help but compare and contrast the Catholic faith that I practice and Islam. Also as a football player I understood what the guys were going through.

            After watching this film I had a whole new perspective on the Islamic faith. I never knew how important family was to the Islamic faith. The film shows how important family is by showing how the families during Ramadan would always eat there only meal of the day together. I like that they do that because I believe that family is everything. I also was impressed with the commitment people had towards their faith because during Ramadan they do not eat all day until after sunset. This is incredible to me because I don’t know if I could ever do that for a solid month. While watching this film as a Catholic I started to think what period of time during the year I have to fast. I instantly thought about Lent and how a Catholics are not allowed to eat meat on Fridays. I realized that not eating meat on Fridays is not that bad because these people only eat one meal a day for about a whole month.

           

As a football player I was very impressed that even during practice for a huge rivalry game the Islamic players still did not drink water or anything. All I can say is wow. To not have water during practice would be an extremely hard thing for me and on top of that not having anything to eat the whole day would drive me crazy. To be that dedicated to your faith is a very honorable thing because as a person who has been in high school and played football it is easy to get caught up and feel like football is the center of your universe. But in all reality it is not. These kids in this film showed that even though football is a big part of their lives, there are still more important things then it. These kids showed how dedicated they are to their faith and family. Looking back at it I wish that I dedicated myself to my faith the way those kids do.