A month of mercy. A month of structure.
Ramadan at GSIS is built to nourish the soul and strengthen the community. Every night of the month has a shape before the month begins, and almost none of it is left to improvise.
Nothing here is improvised. The sponsor calendar is filled before the first night. The youth team knows its jobs. The sisters coordination team runs the floor. The schedule is published where anyone can read it instead of passed around by word of mouth, and no part of the month depends on somebody remembering it on the day.
Ramadan is planned here, not reacted to.
The masjid does not wait for the crescent and then start deciding. The calendar is set, the sponsors are lined up, the teams know what they own, and the plan is written down. Five things that planning is for.
Spiritual growth
The point of the month, and the reason everything else on this page exists. A fasting person should be able to pray, listen, and read without having to organize any of it themselves.
Community unity
Ramadan is the one month of the year the whole community sits in the same room most nights. Planning is what turns that into something people belong to rather than something they merely attend.
A fuller masjid
More people walk in during Ramadan than at any other time, including people who have not been inside in years. Nobody should arrive and find that no one was expecting them.
Structured programming
Every track below has a person responsible for it, a plan behind it, and a place on the calendar. A program with nobody’s name attached to it does not actually happen.
Giving that lines up
Zakat, sadaqah, Zakat al-Fitr, and fidyah all come due in this month. They run through one giving system with named funds and verifiable receipts, not a box by the door.
What an evening looks like, every night of the month.
The shape of the night is the same from the first night to the last, so a person who comes once already knows what to expect the second time. The whole arc moves with the sunset, which is why no clock time is printed on this page.
Maghrib, and the fast breaks
Dates and water go out before the adhan so that nobody is hunting for a plate at the moment the fast ends. The fast is broken together, and Maghrib is prayed straight away, before anyone sits down to the meal.
Iftar in the hall
The full meal, cooked or catered by that night’s sponsor, carried and served by the youth team, with the sisters coordination team running the floor. There is always a place for a visitor, and nobody is asked for money at the door.
A short reflection
A brief reminder while the room is already sitting down: one ayah, one hadith, or one honest question answered in plain language. It is a reflection and not a lecture, and it finishes before the adhan for Isha rather than running over it.
Isha, then Taraweeh
Taraweeh is prayed every single night of the month. The kids taraweeh corner runs alongside it, supervised, so that parents can pray a full night instead of standing in the doorway counting heads.
Qiyam
Qiyam runs on the weekend nights, when people can stay late without a workday waiting on the other side of it. It is long, it is quiet, and it is the part of the week regulars plan the rest of their weekend around.
Tahajjud through the last ten nights
Through the last ten nights the masjid stays open late and Tahajjud is prayed in congregation. This is the stretch the whole month has been building toward, the hall is at its fullest, and it is worth rearranging your sleep for.
No clock times are printed on this page, on purpose. Maghrib, Isha, Taraweeh, and Qiyam all move with the sunset, so a time typed here would be wrong inside of a week. The times that actually govern the night live on Prayer Times, calculated fresh every morning for Myrtle Beach with the iqamah times set by the masjid. Anything specific to the season, a confirmed start night, a Qiyam that moves, a schedule that shifts partway through, is posted on Announcements.
A community iftar system, organized on purpose.
Feeding a full hall every night for a month is logistics before it is hospitality. GSIS runs it as a system with four moving parts, each one owned by people who know it is theirs. Nothing about the food is left to chance.
The sponsor calendar
Every night of the month is a line on a sponsor calendar, and one family, one business, or one group of friends takes each night. The calendar is filled before the month starts rather than chased night by night, and a night still open gets offered again out loud instead of quietly dropped.
Online sign up
Sponsoring happens through the form further down this page, not a clipboard that lives in somebody’s car. You say which part of the month suits you, whether you would share a night with another sponsor, and how to reach you. Nothing is booked until a person has spoken to you.
The youth serve system
Setup, serving, and cleanup are run by the Ramadan service team out of the Youth Program, night after night for the whole month. It is a real job with a rota and a coordinator, not a way of keeping teenagers occupied, and it is one of the reasons a young person still walks through these doors at twenty five. The Youth Program
The sisters coordination team
The sisters coordination team runs the floor: what goes out and when, how the sisters’ section is served, where families with small children are seated, and who is watching the kitchen. A sister coming for the first time gets folded in quickly, usually over a cup of tea on her first night. The Sisters Program
What it actually feels like. The hall fills in the last twenty minutes before sunset, and it is louder than you expect. Somebody will put a date in your hand whether you asked for one or not. Children run between the tables while the adults pretend not to notice. When the adhan finally goes, the whole room falls quiet at the same moment, and then everyone eats at once. You do not need to be a member, you do not need to bring anything, and you do not need to know a single person in the room. Come as you are and sit down.
Three ways to leave the month knowing more than you came in with.
Fasting is the easy part to see. The learning track is the part that changes what you do in Shawwal, and it is built so that a working adult can keep up with all three without giving up a single night of Taraweeh.
The 15 minute reminder, after Asr
Fifteen minutes, every day, straight after Asr. Short enough that a fasting person can sit through it in the hardest part of the afternoon, and specific enough to be worth staying for: one ayah, one hadith, or one practical question about fasting, answered properly rather than waved away.
The thematic khutbah series
The Friday khutbahs through Ramadan run as one series on a single theme rather than as unconnected talks that happen to fall in the same month. Each one is posted afterwards with its speaker, its date, a short summary, and the recording when there is one, so a khutbah you missed is not lost. The Friday Khutbah
The Ramadan Book Circle
One book, read across the month, with sittings to talk it through. It is open to anyone who will actually read it, converts and lifelong Muslims in the same circle, and the discussion assumes no background and no Arabic. Ask at the masjid for the title the circle is reading this season.
You do not have to pick one. The daily reminder sits before Maghrib, the khutbah is on a Friday, and the Book Circle is read at home. They were deliberately placed so that none of the three collides with iftar or with Taraweeh.
A month children remember, not one they are told to be quiet through.
Ramadan is when a child either falls in love with the masjid or learns that it is a place where they are in the way. GSIS plans for the first one, and that planning is why parents can pray here.
The kids taraweeh corner
A supervised corner runs through Taraweeh every night. Younger children are kept busy and reasonably quiet, older ones pray part of the night and sit for the rest, and no parent has to choose between their child and their prayer. It is the single most requested thing on this page, and it is the reason families make it to the last ten nights at all.
Ramadan activity sheets
Printed activity sheets go home with the children through the month: a fasting chart they fill in themselves, a dua to learn each week, the story of the month told for their age, and something to color. It gives a child their own Ramadan to do rather than a month of watching the adults do theirs.
Youth tafsir night
A night for the teenagers, sitting with the meaning of what is being recited in Taraweeh instead of only hearing the sound of it. Questions are expected and none of them are too basic. It runs through the Youth Program, and young people already in the Weekend Qur’an and Arabic School come straight across to it. The Youth Program
Two programs sit alongside this month. The Weekend Qur’an and Arabic School is where your child learns to read the Book, and youth tafsir night is where that reading starts to mean something. The Youth Program runs Ramadan Readiness as one of its four quarterly themes, so the young people carrying trays at iftar have been preparing for this month since long before it started.
Zakat given here is distributed as zakat. Full stop.
Most Muslims pay their zakat in Ramadan, and most of them have no way of finding out what happened to it afterwards. That gap is the reason the Giving Desk exists and the reason zakat is handled the way it is described below.
Your zakat cannot become a light bill.
Zakat is tracked in its own ledger from the moment it arrives. It is never pooled with sadaqah, never borrowed to cover operations, and never spent on a building, a utility bill, or a salary. It moves only to the eligible recipients named in the Qur’an, and nowhere else.
Zakat given here is distributed as zakat. Full stop. Every gift lands in a named fund, and every receipt carries a verification code that you or anyone else can check afterwards.
Zakat
Held apart from every other fund and spent only on the eight categories of eligible recipients named in the Qur’an. Not one dollar of it pays for a building, a light bill, or a salary.
Sadaqah
Unrestricted giving that goes wherever the need is greatest that week, from a family in trouble to the light bill to a program the community asked for.
Zakat al-Fitr
Due from every household before the Eid al-Fitr prayer, on behalf of yourself and every person in your care. The amount is posted on the giving page as the end of the month approaches.
Fidyah and Kaffarah
Fidyah covers a fast that cannot be made up. Kaffarah covers an expiation owed for a specific violation. Ask the imam if you are not sure which one applies to you.
The zakat education workshop
A teaching session on how zakat is actually calculated: what counts as zakatable wealth, where the nisab sits, and how to handle gold, a business, a retirement account, or a debt somebody owes you. Bring your numbers and your awkward questions. A fair number of people leave having discovered they had been working it out wrong for years.
Transparent distribution
What is collected here is distributed here, through a process the board can account for. Every gift goes into a named fund, every receipt carries a code you can check on Verify a receipt, and the distribution is reported rather than assumed. Nobody has to take it on trust.
Local hardship cases
A family in this community behind on rent, a new Muslim cut off by their own household, a funeral a family cannot cover, a widow whose car has finally died. Local hardship cases are met from these funds quietly, with no name read out in the hall. If you know of a case, or you are the case, speak to the imam directly.
How to give your zakat. There is no separate zakat form to go hunting for. Zakat is given through the Giving page, where Zakat is its own fund with its own ledger, sitting apart from Sadaqah and from everything else. Choose that fund and what you give is zakat from the moment it arrives until the moment it reaches somebody eligible for it. If you would rather hand it over in person, bring it to the masjid and ask for a receipt.
The whole site switches into Ramadan mode.
GSIS runs a season switch. On the night the month is confirmed, a volunteer sets it from a phone and every page changes at once. There is no scramble to update a website while the community is waiting for an answer, and no printed card photographed and passed around a group chat.
Tonight’s iftar time
The home page grows a fasting card carrying tonight’s iftar time, for every single day of the month.
When suhoor ends
The same card carries the time suhoor closes, so nobody is guessing at the kitchen table before dawn.
A live countdown
It counts down to whichever comes first, suhoor closing or iftar, and turns over to the next one on its own.
The taraweeh line
Taraweeh and the number of rakat the masjid prays sit on the card too, set by the masjid rather than assumed.
Outside the month the card is simply not there and the site goes back to an ordinary week. No banner runs across every page, because Ramadan is not an emergency. While the community is waiting on a sighting, the question is posted on the site so that nobody has to call the imam to ask.
Take a night, and the whole hall breaks its fast on your account.
Whoever feeds a fasting person has the same reward as the one who fasted, without any of it being taken from the faster. Sponsoring a night costs you one evening and one conversation. Tell us you want a night and we come back to you with the dates still open and what a night costs.
What a sponsorship covers
The meal for the whole hall on your night: the food, the drinks, the dates that go out before the adhan, and the serving supplies that go with them. Cook it, cater it, or hand the whole thing to us. You are not asked to carry or serve it unless you want to.
What you are not asked to do
Setup and cleanup belong to the Ramadan service team. The floor belongs to the sisters coordination team. If you want to be there on your night and help, you are very welcome. If you would rather sponsor quietly and not be involved in the evening at all, that is welcome too.
Sharing a night
Two or three households can take a night together, and many do. The form asks whether you would share, and we match the sponsors who said yes to each other instead of putting anybody on the spot in front of the hall.
Being thanked, or not
The form has one optional line for a name to thank publicly, which families and businesses sometimes want. Leave it blank and you are not named anywhere, on the night or afterwards. Both answers are normal here.
Sponsor an Iftar, interest form
The form asks for your name and how to reach you, whether you are sponsoring as an individual or family, a business, or a group of friends, which part of the month suits you best, whether you would share a night, and anything you want us to know. It takes about two minutes.
What happens next. This form does not book a night and does not ask you for money. Somebody from the masjid comes back to you with the nights still open, what a night costs this season, and how to pay, and nothing is confirmed until you have said yes to a specific date. The full sponsor calendar, with every night listed and claimable, opens shortly before the month begins. Filling this in puts your name on the list first, so you get your pick of nights when it does.
Privacy note. What you write here is used to contact you about sponsoring a night and for nothing else. It is never sold, never posted publicly, and never added to a mailing list you did not ask for. The name you give for a public thank you appears only in connection with the night you sponsored, and only if you chose to fill that line in.
The things people ask about Ramadan here.
Do I have to be a member to come to iftar?
I am not Muslim. Can I come to an iftar?
I became Muslim recently and this is my first Ramadan.
I cannot fast this year. Should I still come?
Can I bring my children?
I want to help. Where do I start?
When does Ramadan start, and how will I know?
The month ends. The community does not.
Everything on this page runs on people who were already here in Rajab and will still be here in Shawwal. If Ramadan is the month you come back, let it be the month you stay. The programs that carry the rest of the year are waiting on the other side of Eid, and they are the same rooms with the same faces in them.
Questions first? Call (843) 902-2808 or email secretary@gsismasjid.org. The masjid is at 4328 Waccamaw Blvd in Myrtle Beach, with parking on site. Every prayer time is on Prayer Times, and anything specific to this season is posted on Announcements.