Issue 145

Mahfuza Talks About What Ramadan Means To Her

25th September 2006

What is the Month of Ramadan?

Due to begin on the 23rd of September this year, the month of Ramadan falls on the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar. The Islamic calendar is based on the lunar system which is ten or eleven days shorter than the normal calender. This means that the month of Ramadan and other Islamic festivals falls ten to eleven days earlier than in the previous year with the result that over the years it is possible to experience Ramadan for example in the different seasons of the year. Throughout our lives we experience fasting in all kinds of conditions, just as the poor do around the world.

Ramadan is also the month of the Qur'an, the month in which the Qur'an was revealed. The moral and spiritual climate of Ramadan helps the flourishing of the Qur'anic message in which the ambiance is of goodness, humility, righteousness, love for good and aversion for evil.

Fasting is an act of worship and submission to God. This is a time for deep devotion and dedication to Allah (God). So what exactly is fasting? For starters, fasting is not solely about hunger and thirst. The prophet Muhammed (peace be upon Him) taught that God has no need for the hunger and thirst of someone who hurts others, violates their dignity or usurps their rights.

The fasting of the stomach must be matched by the fasting of the limbs. The eyes, ears, tongue, hands and feet all have their respective fasts to undergo. The tongue's temptations, for example - lies, backbiting, slander, vulgarity and senseless argumentation - must be challenged and curbed to maintain the integrity of the fast. Ramadan is about restraining anger, doing good deeds, exercising personal discipline, and preparing oneself to serve as a good person during and after Ramadan.

Restraint from food, water, and undesirable behavior makes a person more mentally disciplined and less prone to unhealthy behavior. The month of Ramadan is expected to teach us how to be in control of ourselves, in control of our desires, in control of our wants.

Fasting is a human transformation, with hunger and thirst being merely the first stage, the external dimension, in a monthlong inner journey of struggle and discovery.

It is a means of striving to go by each day realizing and embracing one's own heightened sense of existence and being. And in turn, to be grateful to be living and breathing in the world as we do. When one deprives oneself of any of the five senses (taste in this case), other senses are automatically heightened, one treads the earth a little more cautiously aware of being human — a little more humbly.

How is it observed?

As a general rule the month of fasting is observed by total abstinence from all types of food and drink, which includes smoking, chewing gum or any other substances. It is abstinence in totality from dawn to sunset daily for the entire month.

Who should fast?

Fasting is obligatory on every sane adult Muslim but there are exemptions to fasting some of which are temporary in nature while others are permanent. An example of a temporary exemption is when a person might be ill and fasting could aggravate their illness or delay their recovery. God does not want to put anyone in to difficulty and overburden them. Others include breast feeding and pregnant women and anyone who might be traveling. They are required to make up the days missed at a later time.

As for permanent exemptions these would include the old and infirm, and those who are chronically ill. Circumstances such as these which will not allow the persons to make up for what is missed are required to make a substitute for fasting in the form of providing food for a poor person throughout the month of Ramadan.

Spiritual

The month of Ramadan is a time for the individual to reconnect with their God. It's a time for one to recharge for the rest of the year. It's a time for spiritual empowerment. It's a good time for everyone to reach out to their neighbors. It's a time for one to review one's account with God and with others around them. It should remind everyone of responsibilities which may not have been fulfilled.

So it is a month devoted to worship, but not one in which the believer renounces the world or runs away from his responsibilities. He abstains from food and drink for a limited period. The stress is on selfdiscipline. Fasting is not meant to punish the body, but to strengthen the mind, directing it to higher things.

Behavior Modification

One of the most benefiting factors of fasting is that its observer is able to control or change his or her old or so called 'unbreakable' habits. The reason being is that human life is an embodiment of acquired habits. To change or control a habit is to wage a war on oneself. Fasting helps in conditioning the heart, the soul, and the body on the virtues of patience, tenacity, and firmness in the face of adversity.

Patience is the pinnacle of self-mastery, discipline and spiritual agility. Patience is to turn the phrase "I can't" into "I can." It is to say the difficult is easy.

Customs, obsessive behaviors like smoking, too, are curtailed with relative ease in the face of a higher calling.

Health Benefits

Ramadan fasting has spiritual, physical, psychological, and social benefits

Fasting is a sentinel against disease, provided that the faster follows the strict dietary rule: eat during fast breaking and avoiding overeating.

Physicians today acknowledge the many benefits of fasting that ensure health and the soundness of one's body and mind. The physiological effect of fasting includes lowering of blood sugar, lowering of cholesterol and lowering of the systolic blood pressure. In fact, fasting would be an ideal recommendation for the treatment of mild to moderate, stable, non-insulin diabetes, obesity, and essential hypertension.

Besides nurturing resistance and ability to face hardships and endurance, fasting reflects on outward physical appearance by cutting out gluttony and getting rid of excess fat. The benefits of fasting on health do not stop there but are instrumental in alleviating a number of physical diseases, including those of the digestive systems, such as chronic stomachache, inflammation of the colon, liver diseases, indigestion, and conditions such as obesity, arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure, asthma, diphtheria and many other maladies.

Fasting in general has been used in medicine for medical reasons including weight management, for rest of the digestive tract and for lowering lipids. There are many adverse effects of total fasting as well as so-called crash diets. Islamic fasting is different from such diet plans because in fasting, there is no malnutrition or inadequate calorie intake. The caloric intake of Muslims during Ramadan is at or slightly below the national requirement guidelines.

Social Outlook

Fasting is an annual institution containing all conceivable attributes for human excellence. It is training for the body and soul, a renewal of life, encouraging the spirit of sharing and giving.

The purpose of fasting is to enable a Muslim to control his passions, so that he becomes a person of good deeds and intentions. Fasting develops self-control and helps Muslims overcome selfishness, greed, laziness and other faults.

Besides the feeling of hunger and thirst, fasting teaches us to control the love of comfort. It helps us to keep our sexual desires within control.

Socially, fasting is an expression of solidarity with the poor, the family and the whole society. This is a period in which the rich have first-hand experience of what it is to be poor. The process of disciplining resulting from Islamic fasting should instill in the rich the virtue of mercy, which is very important in terms of social well being, and proliferation of harmony. God Bestows His mercy upon those who themselves are merciful to others. The Messenger (peace be upon Him) said "Those who are merciful to others, the Merciful will have mercy upon them," He continued, "Have mercy upon those on earth, and those in heaven will have mercy upon you."

Fasting is meant to impart a sense of what it means to be truly human. True fasting is self-purification and, from this, a rich inner life should embellish with values such as justice, generosity, patience, kindness forgiveness, mercy and empathy- values that are indispensable, especially mercy and empathy, to communal life as we know it. Knowing about hunger is different from knowing hunger. Empathy is not an intellectual equation; it is a human experience. We are typically spectators to the human drama around us. Fasting in Ramadan is designed to establish equality among the rich and the poor. It is a compulsory experience of poverty in that it makes all people share a quality, of feeling and to sympathize with one another through a collective sense of pain.

Our hardness of heart often springs from our distance from the human condition of others. The poor, sick, disenfranchised, oppressed - we have rarely walked a mile in their shoes, or even just a few footsteps. If we taste what it feels like to be hungry, we are more likely to care for those who are. Ramadan is supposed to teach us how to save for the poor, how to give some of what we have for the poor and the needy and not to throw anything away, to show gratitude to God.

A Muslim is expected, in the spirit of the month of Ramadan, to reach out to all people and fasting does just that. A fasting person should have feelings of sympathy for the poor. Since the sense of compassion should springs from the feeling of pain. Fasting is a practical means to develop compassion for other people's sufferings.

The fasting person enriches his fasting by the remembrance of God, the recitation of the Qur'an, the night prayers, Zakah, Sadaqah (charity), and by refraining from sins and obscenity.

Fasting is meant to teach a person to give up on cursing others, abusing others, looking down on others, speaking ill of others.

It is a training course for us, to sustain that personality throughout the year. Then after a year, I might start losing the momentum. This is why another month of Ramadan comes, to keep me on the path of guidance, on the path of righteousness.

Mahfuza Zaman