By Abdul Haque Chowdhury
article taken from Khaleej Times
For the more than 1.5 billion Muslims around the world, the holy month of Ramadan is the most sacred time of the year. The fact that the revelation of the Holy Quran commenced in the month of Ramadan testifies to the sanctity, graciousness and divine excellence of this sacred month.
Testifies the Holy Quran: "Ramadan is the month in which the Quran was sent down as a guide to mankind, it also having clear signs for guidance and judgement between right and wrong."
Ramadan is the month of self-restraint. It symbolises for the Muslim community a time of soul-seaching and a fresh new invocation of faith. With the beginning of the month of fasting, it becomes the responsability of every Muslim to call forth within himself the spirit of the belief which Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) inaugurated through Islam.
At the core of that belief is a readiness on the part of Muslims to abjure pleasures of a worldly nature and instead focus on a reflection on the munificence of the Creator, the abundance of which can only serve to further buttress individual faith. In Ramadan, it is faith that is sorely tested, through Muslims sacrificing their temporal desires in favour of spiritual enlightenment.
The nature of such enlightenment necessarily comes through prayer and fasting for every Muslim. It is religious duty ordained by faith and has no room for compromise. More importantly, fasting entails a temperament that brings total commitment to the observance of the principles of Islam. Fasting is reduced to pointlessness when the individual engaged in it only appears to be going without food and drink for a whole day, until the call to prayer at Maghrib. In other words, fasting, being one of the pillars of the Islamic faith that its adherents must strenuously uphold, is at once an emotion and an act that begins somewhere deep within the soul and reaches out toward a higher plane of spiritual belief.
[Now, some people, like the non-believers might say that the muslim fasting is dangerous to health. It happened so many times to be asked to leave this fast because i destroy my stomach, but how can Allah who loves us the most make us do something bad to us? This is not possible, so i have one video which will answer all the questions regarding this matter:
So muslim fasting is actually healthy to our body.]
Indeed, self-abnegation is at the core of fasting. Absolute abstinence from all those pleasures that undermine religiosity is the underlying thought during the holy month. At the same time, it is fellow feeling, a concern for those who are deprived and therefore suffer through their lives, that is the priority in Ramadan. The poor need to be helped, the ailing require sympathy and assistance from those more fortunate. Let that lesson be renewed in Ramadan.
Let Ramadan this year, therefore, be a renewed opportunity for Muslims around the world to rediscover their innermost qualities through a clear pursuit of their faith. That Islam is a religion of peace, that it abhors extremism and terrorism in the name of faith, is a truth that must be reasserted in Ramadan.
Honesty, sincerity, courage of conviction and an upholding of the truth are the attributes Muslims are expected to maintain and promote in this holy month.
Ramadan commences with the sighting of the new moon and ends when the new moon of Shawal is seen. Fasting is an ancient form of worship recognised by all religions. But Islam introduced a new spirit into the institution of fasting. For the first time in history, fasting was blessed with a systematic regulation, a scientific method, a noble justification. In the days before the Prophet (pbuh), fasting meant the suffering of privation in the hours of mourning and sorrow. Islam introduced a revolutionary innovation, and Al-Siyam stood not for mere suffering or abstinence but as an institution for the moral uplift and spiritual elevation of the human soul.
Al-Siyam or the fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, one of the five pillars of Islam, is indeed a boon, a divine privilege, a glorious opportunity unparalleled by any other act of piety or worship. "It is an armour", declares the Prophet(pbuh), "with which one protects oneself".
