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Ramadan Under the Blockade: The Women of Havana’s Only Mosque
For Cuba's tiny Muslim community, the electricity blackouts, the food shortages, and the sharp reduction of public transportation make it increasingly difficult to participate in all the traditions that come with Ramadan.
Mar 08, 2026
In the Spring of 2022, I spent the last nights of Ramadan and Eid al-Adha in Havana, Cuba. I made it to Mezquita Abdallah, the only mosque in the whole country, before the sun went down—I'd missed the Eid prayer entirely, but I was able to sit around a table and talk with some of the women there. They told me what it was like to be Muslim in Cuba; many of them were converts like me, and few had Muslim families aside from the ones they made from scratch. Since I left Cuba in 2022, life there has gotten a lot worse.
International Women's Day is on March 8. Around the world, women and families are bearing the brunt of brutal US sanctions and militarism, and Cuba is no different. I've kept in touch with the women of the Havana mosque through a collection of WhatsApp messages, phone calls, and voice notes. This year, in the days leading up to the holy month of Ramadan, I conducted a series of interviews with them. In the wake of President Donald Trump's complete blockade of oil to the island, these women face an intensifying struggle to survive and provide for their families. Muslims in Cuba are entering one of the most beloved times of the year while grappling with a level of scarcity that is unimaginable to most. The women I talked to will ring in International Women's Day trying to balance the strains of living under a blockade while fasting for Ramadan.
For Cuba's tiny Muslim community, the electricity blackouts, the food shortages, and the sharp reduction of public transportation make it increasingly difficult to participate in all the traditions that come with Ramadan.
"For most people, it's very difficult to access the mosque during Ramadan,” said a 36-year-old mother. “There is no reliable transportation due to the lack of fuel. Many of us will have to stay home to break our fast because we live far away from the mosque. Without transportation, it becomes almost impossible to get there."
What will happen to the women living under the boot of the US empire if women here sit back and merely wait for the next election cycle?
Muslims who don’t live at the center of Havana’s old city (and most of them don’t) can’t pray at the mosque during the holiest month of the year. Lack of access to food on the island as a whole naturally leads to less access to non-pork options and halal meats, and the mosque is generally a place where halal foods would be distributed.
A single woman from the Mosque remarked that oftentimes, Muslims in Cuba practice their faith without any family support. "Cuban Muslim women face big challenges every day. Maintaining our religion in the correct way and surviving in the difficult economic situations," she said, "This is difficult for Muslim women who live by themselves, who are sick, or don’t get support from their families and society. And those who are elderly and alone."
She mentioned that she is the sole caretaker for her elderly mother, who is very sick. "I'm taking care of her, Alhamdulillah," she said, which means "Praise to God" or "Thank God."
The world has become somewhat familiar with the concept of blockades by watching what’s happening in Gaza. While the blockade on Gaza is enforced physically by the heavily armed Israeli military, the blockade on Cuba has been imposed economically, relying on trade threats and sanctions by the United States. Both types of blockades lead to food and medicine shortages, spiked prices, and widespread inaccessibility, causing hunger and the worsening of treatable medical conditions. Without access to proper nourishment and equipment, people die. Economic sanctions alone kill half a million people every single year. Cuba has some of the best and most capable doctors in the world, and there is no shortage of manpower—but the blockade increasingly restricts medical equipment coming into the country.
Around the world, it’s not uncommon for the responsibility of childcare and eldercare to fall on women. And when food and medicine are scarce, women carry the weight of keeping their families healthy, often faced with impossible choices.
Mayerci, another mother from the mosque, has two young children. Her son has struggled with his health for the last four years. Previously, the family was given nutritional support like supplementary milk and chicken rations, but the food shortages caused by the blockade effectively ended that extra assistance. Hospitals have run out of the zinc sulfate and asthma medication that he needs to remain healthy. On top of that, Mayerci herself is in need of surgery to treat her cystic fibrosis—but the hospitals no longer have the equipment for it. While dealing with her own illness, she has to try to make sure her children survive under increased scarcity.
"This is the life of Cubans today: if you buy food, you cannot afford clothing or medicines, and if you buy medicines, you cannot afford food," said Mayerci.
These interviews all took place about a week after the Trump administration implemented the total blockade on fuel. The conditions have only gotten worse since then, and will likely continue to decline for the foreseeable future. The effects compound for women, and evidently even more so for Muslim women at this time of the year.
While the women didn’t express any optimism for the near future, when I asked about Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio's talking points on Cuba, one of them remarked to me, "Personally, I don’t believe capitalism is the solution."
There is a glimmer of hope, though—much like we saw with Gaza, the world is mobilizing in solidarity with Cuba. In March, Cuba will receive massive shipments of solar panels that were crowdsourced by people near and far. Caravans and flotillas are also traveling to Cuba during the springtime, carrying suitcases stuffed with food and medicines to aid the Cuban people. By air, by land, and by sea, organizations like The People's Forum, CODEPINK, Progressive International, and others will attempt to provide some semblance of relief to the Cuban people.
This act of solidarity is powerful, but it won’t be enough. The solar panels won’t be able to power the entire Cuban electrical grid, and individual people can only fit so many supplies in their personal suitcases. Much like the genocide in Gaza, an end to the suffering in Cuba would require the people of the United States to rise up and fervently resist the warfare being carried out in their name by the likes of Marco Rubio and Donald Trump. With the US military intercepting ships bringing fuel to Cuba, and considering the violent history of US intervention, one cannot rule out some sort of armed US attack on Cuba. After the world set such an alarming precedent in Gaza, I can’t help but worry for my friends in Cuba—what will happen to the women living under the boot of the US empire if women here sit back and merely wait for the next election cycle?
History shows us the resilience of the Cuban people. My friends are surviving by cooking on coal, strategically using the limited hours of electricity to take care of their families—but how long can that last?
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The Last Thing Iraq Needs: US Sanctions Threaten a Nation Trying to Heal
As I leave Baghdad, I carry a sense of Iraq’s resilience, the palpable scars of war, the warmth of its people, the hope for a better future, and the ongoing story of a nation rebuilding itself.
Dec 14, 2025
I arrived at the Taj Hotel in Baghdad's Jadriyah neighborhood at 6:00 am, worn thin by the long flight from Los Angeles. After sleeping until mid-afternoon, I stepped out into the 90°F heat on a simple mission: find falafel, fries, and a place to exchange money. A local bus picked me up and dropped me right across from a falafel shop—a small act of hospitality. Full and settled, I walked beside the Tigris River, watching construction cranes against the sky. Life was visibly moving forward. Yet the mental newsreel kept playing: bombs falling on these same banks 20 years earlier. I was a tourist now in a country I had once protested my own nation for invading. Needing to escape both the heat and the weight of those memories, I returned to the hotel for Nutella cake and Iraqi tea, yet deeply conscious of the complex layers beneath the surface.
The next day settled heavily. We started at Tahrir Monument and the roundabout where Saddam’s statue once stood—toppled in 2003 by US Marines in an image seen around the world. Today, no plaque marks the spot. Only election banners fluttered in the wind. From there, we traveled to the Arch of Ctesiphon, a soaring Persian vault from 540 AD. Nearby lay the relics of a different era: a derelict tourist complex and a museum designed by North Koreans, its walls scarred with bullet marks. Al-Mada’in, our guide remarked, had been a final stronghold against the invasion. It’s one thing to read about war and occupation, another to stand where it happened and touch the pockmarked concrete.
Just yards away, young boys kicked a soccer ball in the dust, a powerful scene of life insisting on moving forward. That contrast stayed with me: The tourist complex, once a thriving vacation spot with a luxurious pool, is now a place to store garbage. Aside from the enduring arch, the entire area lies in ruins, destroyed in the war and never rebuilt. Who knows if it ever will be. For some parts of Iraq, rebuilding only began around 2017, over a decade after the invasion. With elections approaching, I wondered about Iraq’s future—and what accountability looks like when destruction runs so deep.
A slower day followed, wandering through Old Baghdad: its bazaar, colonial facades, antique shops, Christian churches, and tea houses thick with the smoke of cigarettes. But I felt an unease seeing Saddam-era memorabilia, like old currency, sold as casual souvenirs. My time in Iraqi Kurdistan, at Amna Suraka and Halabja Memorial, had shown me the human cost of his brutal regime. Later, we passed the haunting cement skeleton of one of Saddam’s grand mosques, frozen mid-construction by the 2003 war. It stood empty, monumental yet abandoned, like a set from Dune—a stark metaphor for interrupted futures.
Now, as the world’s attention drifts to other conflicts, the weight of history here feels so obvious.
We traveled to Babylon. Before entering, we paused before one of the last remaining monuments to Saddam. His image is now outlawed; we gazed at the bullet marks and graffiti scoring the stone. Nearby, his palace loomed over the Euphrates—a hollow shell gazing across timeless dust. After roaming Babylon’s ruins, we crossed a low fence onto the palace grounds. Entering the space once occupied by a brutal dictator again filled me with unease. While others explored the looted, spray-painted halls, I was struck by the collision of histories here: ancient civilization, the US invasion, and the regime’s own atrocities against the Kurds.
From there, we journeyed to Karbala and the breathtaking Al-Abbas Holy Shrine. I wore an abaya to enter, humbled by the devotion, chanting, and crying that resonated in the air. The contrast stayed with me: between ransacked palaces of fallen power, land ravaged by war, and this enduring faith. We paused briefly at one of the world’s largest cemeteries in Najaf before visiting the Holy Shrine of Imam Ali. The long drive south to Nasiriyah that followed gave me space to hold all these layers: history, belief, silence, and dust.
A highlight came in the Mesopotamian Marshes. Gliding by water buffalo through vast wetlands, said to be the Garden of Eden, I felt a deep connection to this ancient ecosystem and the Indigenous communities who sustain it. The use of reeds to build entire homes felt like a quiet miracle. Later, we visited the Great Ziggurat of Ur—a stairway to a Sumerian sky. We moved through biblical landscapes that day, though in the distance stood an old American military base, now repurposed by the Iraqis. Someone showed me photos of US soldiers standing on those same Ziggurat steps.
As I leave Baghdad, I carry a sense of Iraq’s resilience, the palpable scars of war, the warmth of its people, the hope for a better future, and the ongoing story of a nation rebuilding itself. Now, as the world’s attention drifts to other conflicts, the weight of history here feels so obvious. The US footprint left in Iraq is deep—and as it threatens Iraq with sanctions, it is the last thing this country needs as it tries to move forward and heal.
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'Pure Evil': Rubio Ripped for Sanctions Against Cuba's Medical Missions
"The U.S. State Department should explain to Americans and the international community how the attack on Cuban medical services, on which the health of millions of people in dozens of countries depends, enhances their country," said Cuba's president.
Feb 26, 2025
The Trump administration is under fire this week for expanding a visa restriction policy that targets Cuba's medical missions around the world—which U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described as "forced labor," a characterization Cuban officials reject.
"This expanded policy applies to current or former Cuban government officials, and other individuals, including foreign government officials, who are believed to be responsible for, or involved in, the Cuban labor export program, particularly Cuba's overseas medical missions," Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, said Tuesday. "This policy also applies to the immediate family of such persons."
Social media users called the Trump administration's move " depraved," "beyond cruel," and "absolutely repulsive," and warned of the impact it could have on patients across the globe.
Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the U.S.-based peace group CodePink, said that "this is PURE EVIL. Punishing people who help provide healthcare to poor people around the world."
As Reuters reported Wednesday:
Since its 1959 leftist revolution, Cuba has dispatched an "army of white coats" to disaster sites and disease outbreaks around the world in the name of solidarity. In the last decade, they have fought cholera in Haiti and Ebola in West Africa.
But Cuba has also exported doctors on more routine missions in exchange for cash or goods in recent decades, an increasingly critical source of hard currency in a nation suffering a deep economic crisis.
Venezueanalysis noted Wednesday that "according to official figures, Cuban doctors in Venezuela numbered as many as 30,000, with approximately 255,000 serving in the country since the start of the program following a deal signed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Cuban President Fidel Castro in the year 2000, primarily working in low-income barrios. Havana's support was key during the Covid-19 pandemic, supplying vaccines that Caracas found hard to secure due to wide-reaching U.S. sanctions."
Cuba has been targeted by U.S. sanctions for decades—and although former President Joe Biden notified Congress of his intent to remove the island nation from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list shortly before leaving office last month, President Donald Trump swiftly reversed that decision and restored a list of "restricted entities" created during the Republican's first term.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez denounced those decisions and the visa policy.
Rodriguez took aim at the U.S. secretary of state on Tuesday, saying in English and Spanish social media posts that "once again, Marco Rubio puts his personal agenda before the U.S. interests. The suspension of visas associated to Cuba's international medical cooperation is the seventh unjustified aggressive measure against our population within a month."
"The decision announced today, based on falsehoods and coercion, is intended to affect health services of millions in Cuba and the world, to benefit special groups of interest for which Rubio... guarantees the squandering of the U.S. taxpayers' money," he said.
Díaz-Canel said that "the U.S. State Department should explain to Americans and the international community how the attack on Cuban medical services, on which the health of millions of people in dozens of countries depends, enhances their country."
The new sanctions against Cuba notably come as Republicans in the U.S. Congress work to gut healthcare programs that serve low-income Americans, who have to contend with a for-profit healthcare system dominated by corporate greed.
Every person living in Cuba has access to its universal healthcare system, which is free at the point of service and government-run.
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