How S Your Ramadan Fasting Feasting Or Virtue Signalling

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We are in the midst of Ramadan again, fulfilling one of the five pillars of Islam. We Muslims fast for a month from dawn to dusk, keeping at bay many of our physical wants – food, drinks and, you know, other stuff too!
But Ramadan is much more than that. It’s also a time to focus on our inner selves and our own faith and to reflect on the bigger picture while we fend off hunger, thirst and other physical wants.
Fasting is ultimately about controlling our desires, whether for eating or drinking, or thinking or speaking bad of others, or profiting off them or hurting or denying them the respect they deserve as fellow human beings.

In other words, it’s about striving to control the worst parts of our humanity so the better parts can shine through.
If we don’t do this, then what we’re doing, as my late mother used to say, is merely going hungry and thirsty for a whole month without any of the blessings of Ramadan.
Unfortunately for many, that’s all there is to their Ramadan. For them, the month is about grand iftar dinners, often paid for by others such as employers or business partners or friends. It’s about exploiting what it can very conveniently be – a power play and act of virtue signalling.
Missing the big picture
Many of Islam’s “learneds” focus on the minutiae and the rituals of the faith, often missing the big picture altogether. To them the religion is full of hidden knowledge and complexities that can easily lead the people astray – meaning other people.
To them, Islam is just too complex for ordinary people. But why do they think this is so? Because this is how they get to exercise power over others, by convincing people they’re weak, ignorant and helpless and need you to guide them.
Without this power, there wouldn’t be the huge budgets from the taxpayers to fund their sprawling, ever-growing religious institutions, or to exercise power over others through ever-increasing laws and ordinances and rules and regulations.
Anyway, here I am letting my mind go into overdrive during this holy month! Let’s come back to the more practical sides of life, and see if we can agree on a few things.
So why do we fast?
Can we agree on this – that fasting is a command unto us Muslims, and us Muslims only, to strengthen our faith and make us better Muslims, and hence better human beings?
Therefore, we’ve no right to tell the non-Muslims how they should lead their life during Ramadan. That they eat or drink around us as is their usual custom is not them being disrespectful. That it’s our obligation to persuade them, and not to force them, to see the righteousness of what we’re doing.
Let there not be any more horrible stories about non-Muslim children having to eat in school lavatories during fasting month. Anybody who causes this to happen is showing a huge disrespect to the non-Muslims, and to Islam too.
They need to be called out and censured by every Muslim.
When I fast, life goes on for me, and for others too. Anybody who wants to eat or drink may do so around me. The world doesn’t stop revolving just because you fast. Neither should anybody else.
Conquer temptation
Again, applying the lessons I learnt from my parents, when you fast you’re supposed to face temptations and win over them. Fasting is not about removing temptations altogether so that you don’t have to deal with them.
The poor and unfortunate, with whom for one month in a year we’re supposed to empathise and understand, go hungry and thirsty because they have nothing to eat or drink – not because they had food but choose to hide it somewhere unseen.
Fasting is to face all the temptations in life, and through the strength of our faith, to say no to them and accept the consequences – hunger, thirst, abstinence, holding our tongues, helping the less fortunate.
Victory in the eyes of God is when we achieve those, and not when we force others to make sacrifices on our behalf.
So big fancy dinners at five-star hotels can’t be what fasting is about, unless for you fasting is something you do that requires a lot of recognition and celebration.
Feasts are not the way
If you have that much money to spend, go and make the life of those less fortunate than you at least slightly better, even if only for a month.
If, after a month of fasting and fighting temptation, you didn’t feel at least slightly weak, then what have you been doing at all? If you end Ramadan having put on weight through sumptuous feasts – man, I don’t even know how to begin to tell you that something has gone wrong.
Our prime minister had cautioned Muslims against having big feasts during Ramadan. I think he has this one absolutely right, and whichever side of the political divide you are on, at least on this one you can agree.
The time to celebrate is when Ramadan finishes and we face the first day of Shawal. And no, there’s nothing in the celebration that requires fancy new clothes and sumptuous meals.
Don’t mistake religious obligations with societal dictates.
Many Muslims go straight to six more days of fasting after Hari Raya, and often for many more weeks and even months throughout the year. Why? Because they want to remind themselves that the struggle continues. It doesn’t stop just because Ramadan ends.
God’s back-street enforcer
I came across the story of an ultra-pious politician from an east coast state proudly plying the back street of his constituency looking for those who don’t fast, or even those who may appear as not fasting, such as buying food during the daylight hours.
Well, that’s certainly someone who has appointed himself as God’s enforcer with the right to shame and punish others. And all this is happening, as I had written earlier, within the same region where many Muslims are victims of drugs and crimes because their leaders have no clue on how to make things better.
It’s certainly nice to have such powers, but with power comes responsibility. Responsibility requires exercising care, concern and humility, over one’s own self and over others too.
We have always been asked to do that by our faith, and Ramadan is when that ask is even more pronounced.
Anyway, to fellow Muslims, may you have a blessed month of sacrifice and victory over yourself. And don’t forget those who have to continue being hungry and thirsty even when the sun goes down. That is the true spirit of Ramadan. - FMT
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.

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