Ramadan
Fast for the Body – Feast for the Soul
By Muhammad Harun Riedinger
One of the most difficult things for the sons and daughters of Adam is to break habits, especially those which are not ‘bad habits’ as such, because with these, our conscience is not lending us a helping hand. The gracious month of Ramadan, which we have been blessed with once again, is contrary to the general notion, not about fasting in the sense of depriving our body of nourishment – usually people rather gain weight and suffer from the effects of overeating, in which they indulge when food intake is permitted during this month, which of course was not intended by God, when He gave the concession that we could break the fast – Ramadan is, as a matter of fact all about breaking habits. This of course falls very well within the meaning of fasting, if it is taken in its real and inner meaning, because by breaking habits we are in fact depriving ourselves of certain indulgences, which have become part of our nature.
A very learned man in Egypt once told me, that habits – good ones as well as bad ones – are actually invisible creatures of our own making, which we beget as soon as we carry out any action. These creatures then come back to us and urge us to repeat the very action which brought them into existence, because our repetition of that action is their nourishment, and keeps them alive, and the more often we repeat it, the stronger this creature becomes, and the stronger it becomes, the more powerful becomes its soliciting, until it reaches dimensions of irresistibility, and we cannot but give in to its compelling demands. This is quite a gruesome scenario, when it comes to bad habits; imagine some hideous monster standing behind a drug addict or a gambler, whose willpower it has crushed completely, that poor fellow will stop at nothing to do its bidding, i.e. satisfy his addiction. Of course on the other hand, there are also these beautiful creatures, which fill the hearts and souls of those who are habitual good-doers (and those who benefit by their goodness) with joy and happiness. These kinds of habits need not be broken, because they include within their very essence some degree of self-denial and sacrifice, otherwise they could not possibly lead to real happiness.
Our eating habits of course are not particularly good or bad in the above sense, they are just habits, but Ramadan uproots them entirely, and it does so with a lot of other every day affairs as well, which we will, just because of this habit-loving nature of ours, perceive to some degree as hardship. It is of course not proper for us to ask why Allah ordains what He prescribed for His bondmen and bondwomen, He does what He pleases, and no one can question Him, but we can rest assured that He does not intend to oppress us, and that all that is prescribed for us is for our own good. Either it gives us protection against the machinations of our ancient foe and the self-destructive tendencies of our lower selves (nafs), or it facilitates us in the achievement of our very purpose of existence, which is the gnosis and inevitably ensuing love of God. Among all forms of Islamic worship, the fast has been given a very special place: the Noble Prophet – Blessings of Allah upon him – has informed us in a hadith qudsi that Allah says that the fast was purely for Him. From this it is obvious that the fast of Ramadan is not a physical affair, but an intensely spiritual one!
Since man is a very complex being, whose essence is the soul, and whose other components and faculties are but offshoots of this essence, all aspects of worship are likewise multi-layered, and to consider and perform them as purely physical acts is to deprive them of their very meaning, and to fall utterly short of fulfilling our obligation of gratitude towards our Creator who has endowed us so generously as no other of our fellow creatures in this world – perhaps in all the worlds.
Let us have a closer look at the implications of this in regard to the fast. Our being does not only consist of stomach and sexual organs, for which the fast has – perhaps because of their particularly ferocious appetite – literally been defined. What of the mind, the senses, the hands, feet and the tongue? Like all other forms of worship such as the prayer, charity, pilgrimage and jihad, the fast too, and perhaps in a particular intense manner, involves all of these too, if we want to take ourselves serious as being “sound” Muslims, otherwise we are spiritually not much more than “partially paralyzed” worshippers.
What then does the fast of the mind and its faculties along with the organs controlled by it imply? The key to this question is again our habits. What are we thinking about most of the time? What gives us the greatest pleasure looking at and listening to? What do we do, and which places do we frequent in our free time? What do we talk about, and with whom? An in-depth analysis of these questions would overstep the limitations of this feature, but there is perhaps no need for it either, because if we put them to ourselves with a little bit of sincerity and self-critique, our conscience will give us very clear answers. That much however can be said, that those things we think and do, which do not benefit anyone, but which we indulge in only for their own sake, deriving some degree of self-satisfaction from them, are the most befitting areas for an abstinence or fast, not to speak of impure and detrimental occupations, of which we anyway know we should shun them, and for which Ramadan, by the way, is a most advantageous opportunity to do something about them. If our thoughts revolve most of the time around worldly loss and gain, to the point that we can’t divert our attention even during prayers, a good “fasting practice” is to put apart a short time of our day and meditate about what our state will be in the grave, where our worldly pursuits will have abandoned us, and perhaps take a tasbih and recite some istaghfar with full attention to what we are reciting. If we are fond of listening to and reading gossip, the traditional practice of reading or listening to the Qur’an (preferably along with a translation) is a formidable fasting practice for the involved faculties of seeing and/or hearing. I could go on and on, but as already indicated, the divinely inspired counselor, our conscience is a very reliable advisor in this matter, and training ourselves to listen to him instead of the insatiable demands of our lower self is another very virtuous fasting practice.
Our daytime abstinence from food drink and sex could hardly be of any gratification for the Creator of the universe. What is pleasing to Allah is that we sacrifice a number of our habits for His sake only, without any apparent benefit for ourselves. Not withstanding that, the well pleasure of the Creator is certain to have very rewarding repercussions on our lives! These may not necessarily be in the form of worldly benefits and physical comforts – although they may just as well, just think of the scientifically proven good effects that a properly conducted fast does have on our health – their main effect will be a definite uplift of our souls, by which not only our own lives, but the entire social environment around us will be illuminated and permeated by bliss. This is the reason for the very special atmosphere, which is prevailing in all Muslim communities throughout Ramadan everywhere in the world. It is the practical interpretation of the well-known hadith, which states that the devils are tied up during Ramadan. On a few occasions I had the misfortune of having to spend this blessed month or part of it in non-Muslim countries, and I can assure you, the blessings from Allah which descend on the Muslims during this month cannot be fathomed, and not taking advantage of them by actively and wholly participating in this generous feast for the soul is like going into the shower with an umbrella….