If you don’t know, Ramadan is the holy month where Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. Even as a preteen and my early years as a teenager, I didn’t get what the point of Ramadan was, but the older I got, the more I understood and the more I was amazed.
Let’s take fasting. People like to eat. And if they’re not eating for thirteen, fourteen, or fifteen hours at a time, you’d think they’d know why. Evidently not. We fast so we can see what it’s like to go without food and water, a harsh reality that many of our brothers and sisters in humanity experience every day, all year round. And the sad, heart-breaking part is that they don’t have an iftaar [meal to break the fast] to look forward to.
Fasting teaches us humility. As humans, there is a seed of ego implanted in us because of our brain’s difficulty in conceptualizing the supernatural and a non-physical entity. Because we cannot fathom much of what God really is, we assume we are the best and most advanced species and we come to believe that we can survive on our own. But just by depriving ourselves of food and water for a few hours comes to show us that our weakness lies in something as simple as not having food. That’s all it takes to make us weak. And this realization of weakness leads us to be humble, one of the most beautiful qualities a soul can possess, in my opinion.
The more mature I get and the greater my understanding becomes, I’ve begun to notice flaws in how we—as an ummah [community]—treat and behave during Ramadan. I was reading some hadith a few days ago, and one hadith in particular really sent chills up my spine because the signs are evident in our present-day lives.
Hazrat K’ab Bin Ayaz (R.A.A.) states that he heard the Holy Prophet (SAW) say: “Every Ummah (nation) has a test to undergo, my Ummah (nation) will be tried through the wealth.” (Tirmizi)
Clearly, we’re undergoing that test right now and I don’t really think we’re passing. How, you may ask? Let’s evaluate Ramadan. During Ramadan, we’re not supposed to be wasteful. We’re not supposed to be luxurious or extravagant with our food (at any time of the year). The whole POINT of fasting for so many hours is to learn the value of food. Yet what do we do?
Well, for suhoor, we have a huge variety of foods because for some reason we can’t seem to compromise on one or two dishes so we feel the need to have a whole buffet. We stuff ourselves and then what do we do? If we don’t want something, we don’t finish it. Simply because we can. Simply because it’s embedded in our psyche that we will always have food, and that it’s okay to throw away something because, hey! There’s more, right?
Seriously, if you’re going to be wasteful or extravagant with food, do yourself a favor and don’t put yourself through fourteen hours of deprivation IF you’re just going to mitigate the progress you should be making with your actions. It’s just paradoxical and it makes no sense and you’re doing something that’s only hurting you in the long run.
Example number 2! To pass the time of fasting, we engage in activities that don’t bring us any closer to Allah or Islam. What would those be?
-- Skyping with friends for excessively long amounts of time to distract yourself from the hunger. Now don’t get me wrong, Skyping with someone isn’t BAD. I’m planning on doing it with my cousin today or tomorrow just to catch up on life and fangirl over the beauty of Ramadan. But you need to keep things in perspective and not let it become a distraction from your prayers and your devotion. Also, if you’re Skyping towards the end of the fast (when you’re the hungriest) while your mother is in the kitchen making iftaar, child click that end button and go help someone who’s just as hungry as you but working thrice as hard to put food on the table. -_____-
