If it were held later in the month of Ramadan, cross-cultural trainer Soumaya Khalifa may not have joined Global Atlanta’s March 12 discussion on managing global teams.
Ms. Khalifa, founder of the Islamic Speakers Bureau in Atlanta, spoke on just the second day of Islam’s holy month, before all-day fasting had yet to take a physical toll.
During the ninth month of every lunar year, many of the world’s nearly 2 billion Muslims eat before sunrise but consume neither food nor water until after sunset, engaging in a time of heightened spiritual devotion and community goodwill.
For U.S. companies, it can also be a time to show consideration for Muslim employees, vendors and customers, for reasons of mutual respect but also economic pragmatism.
“When you have meetings, reconsider lunch and dinner because your Muslim partners and your Muslim employees are not able to eat with you,” Ms. Khalifa said at the annual Expat Expectations forum.
In her presentation, she laid out dates for the holy month wrapping up April 10 with Eid al-Fitr, a holiday marking the breaking of the fast in which Muslims tend to gather with family and share food and gifts.
Hosting an iftar dinner to break the fast together one evening, sending holiday cards or greeting co-workers with a hearty “Ramadan Mubarak” can go a long way, she said, as can understanding both the days and times of day that Muslims are likely to be engaged in religious observances.
While Muslims are always called to pray five times dailyfor instance, Fridays are typically reserved for corporate prayers at mosque, and Ramadan is a time of heightened observance overall.
“People do a lot of prayers during the month — when you schedule meetings, when are they?” Ms. Khalifa said.
Along with the acute observances of Ramadan, Muslims typically abstain from pork and alcohol, and women may adopt expressions of modesty like head coverings that are largely culturally dictated, Ms. Khalifa said.
How a company accommodates their Muslim workforce, she added, can be a proxy for how management exhibits tolerance to other diverse religions and lifestyles, she said.
“Be inclusive — there are other people that you are working with that are not doing the same holidays and observances that you do,” Ms. Khalifa said.
For companies dealing with predominantly Muslim parts of the world, whether in the Middle East, Africa, or places like India and Indonesia, such a posture can dramatically affect the bottom line, as Muslims globally boast cumulative buying power of some $2 trillion, Ms. Khalifa says.
“We have some bankers in the crowd – is that a lot of money?”
Even in the U.S., where the Census Bureau puts the Muslim population at not quite 5 million, certain communities often have higher concentrations of adherents, and the cultural influence of Islam extends beyond practicing believers.
For Ms. Khalifa, helping local companies understand Muslims around the corner and around the world is part of a broader initiative to help companies sending or receiving expatriates prepare them to abandon the “auto-pilot” that’s baked into how they do things in their home culture.
“We always think that “Hey, if someone is an excellent engineer or salesperson, or whatever it is, and they have been relocated from Culture A to Culture B, they’re going to be just as effective,’” she said. “Wrong. When we work with expats we help them really shorten their learning curve.”
Ms. Khalifa was one of eight speakers at Global Atlanta’s Expat Expectations event, where reflections by expats from Sweden and Brazil on resettling in Atlanta were interspersed with expert presentations on issues like tax, real estate, human resources, education and more.
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