Ramadan: A month of longing

Last updated on: July 31, 2011 at 10:10 pm by Guest Contributor

Ramadan: A month of longing 2011-07-31T22:10:10-04:00 Guest Contributor

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Ramadan mubarak

The blessed month of Ramadan is here again. Hundreds of millions of Muslims will fast for a month. They will abstain from eating or drinking from dawn to dusk. They will stand for hours in prayers each night to remember their Lord and express their gratitude to Him, seek His forgiveness and aspire to come closer to Him. The month of Ramadan is easily the World’s largest and longest spiritual festival. Muslims strive hard in this month to re-sew the torn fabric of human spirituality even as political and material impulses asunder it.

Fasting is one of the five pillars of Islam. The Quran instructs that its purpose is to teach Muslims self-restraint. The ritual involves systematic abstinence of things normal to body, mind and spirit. From dawn to dusk the limits are clear; no eating, no drinking, no sex, no fighting, no backbiting, no lying, no anger, no arrogance, no pride, no despair. In this month the sovereignty of the spirit over the body and the mind is reasserted to restore the divine order of things.

There’s hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness.
We are lutes, no more, no less.
If the soundbox is stuffed full of anything, no music.
If the brain and belly are burning clean with fasting,
every moment a new song comes out of the fire.
– Jalaluddin Rumi on fasting in Ramadan.

The point of the exercise for adult Muslims, who are healthy and able, is to develop a regimen of self-restraint and to inculcate a capacity to, borrowing a term from Plato, control one’s appetites. The hope is that this mandatory regimen will become a habit and Muslims will spend the rest of the year in a state of high spiritual alert.

The easy part of the month of Ramadan is the physical part. After a week the body and the mind adjust and one rarely feels hungry or thirsty for most of the day. The last couple of hours are always tough, especially in the US where the days are long and the fasts last from fifteen to sixteen hours.

Ramadan is also the month in which most of the Muslim holy book –The Quran – was revealed. To celebrate the revelation of the Quran Muslims devote special prayers and try to find time to reread it and to recommit to its teaching and its commandments. After fasting all day, many men and women spend two to three hours every night reciting the chapters of the Quran in either congregational or individual prayers.

Muslims believe that Ramadan is a blessed month and the rewards for any good action is multiplied, so much of the annual obligatory and optional charity giving happens in Ramadan. This is a good time to do fund raising if Muslim donors are your target. Islam mandates obligatory giving of 2.5% of accumulated or surplus wealth called Zakat, and many Muslims give it in the month of Ramadan.

The more difficult parts are the one’s that demand spiritual discipline. The struggle to control one’s Id, to master one’s anger and pride, to learn humility and to recognize the insignificance of the self in comparison to the awesome majesty of God, are qualities very difficult to muster. Sufis, Islamic mystics, practice self-renunciation as a means to escape the exile from God the life really is, but rarely succeed. It is not easy to become one with God in one month.

The entire purpose of the month, indeed of Islam itself is to bridge the existential gap between the created and the creator. As long as the created asserts her individual being, she remains distanced from the true Reality of being. The ultimate goal is to annihilate (Fana’a) one’s own self in order to be united with the ultimate and the universal Self. The great Sufi Ibn Arabi captured this longing for unity with the divine more beautifully than anyone. He wrote in his The Secrets of Fasting:

My self, had it not been for you, I would not have been  as if I were Him,
were it not for you! Were it not for you!

Indeed the sense of longing for a taste of the Divine is never felt more acutely than it is in the month of Ramadan. In Ramadan we control our appetite for the created things with the fond hope that desire for the Creator will finally be satiated.

Those who fast with genuine dedication, those who struggle to conquer the self, those who fight to control their bodies, those who give charity and those who exercise humility; they do experience a feeling of cleansing, of purification, which is difficult to describe, but profoundly palpable.

At the end of the month, for some there is a feeling of lightness, as if the weight of impurities that one had been carrying and accumulating all the yearlong has been lifted. For others there is heaviness in the heart and one prays for one more chance to maybe get it right the next time.

Muqtedar Khan is Associate Professor at the University of Delaware and a Fellow of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. His www.ijtihad.org.

Commentary

Previous Post

July 27, 2011

Norway attacks: The price of fear

Next Post

August 3, 2011 Extremism: Talking about religion after Norway

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 2012 Elections 30 Dayd 30 Writers (2017) 30 Days 30 Writers 30 Days 30 Writers (2015) 30 Days 30 Writers (2016) 30 Days 30 Writers (2018) 30 Days 30 Writers 2017 Ali Asadullah Ali Eteraz Alper Bilgili Arthur Richards Asides Asma Uddin Black History Month Briefings Charles Turner Commentary Cyrus McGoldrick Eman H Aly Fatimah Popal Hajj Hajj and Dhul Hijjah Hesham Hassaballa Hisham Hellyer Ibrahim Abusharif Inas Younis Irfan Yusuf Jalal Baig Junaid Afeef Laila Alawa Laila Alwala Mas'ood Cajee Muqtedar Khan Nakia Jackson Newsmakers Parvez Ahmed Podcasts Rabia Chaudry Rafia Zakaria Ramadan Reviews Safiyyah Ally Saud Inam Shahed Amanullah Svend White The Opinionated Oncologist Visions Wajahat Ali Zahed Amanullah Zahir Janmohamed Zainab Khan

Select a Month November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who prophesied the virgin birth?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Jeremiah Isaiah Ezekiel Daniel