Ramadan

Our mosque in Ettington Road underwent a facelift. It was no coincidence that this happened shortly before Ramadan. After all, Ramadan is for Muslims the most important month of the year when they visit the mosque more often than they usually do. We can notice it not just by the number of pedestrians who pass by our house but also by the number of cars that clog our street.

Fasting in summer time is no small feat. The hours without food and drink make up most of the day, fifteen hours or more. What seems particularly vexing is the abstinence of even a drop of water. On warm days when one is doing physical work, this seems not just nearly impossible but positively unhealthy as well.

Muslim apologists, however, maintain that fasting is healthy for body and soul. They claim that it cleanses the body from all kinds of toxic substances that accumulate in the body thoughout the year. The fast of Ramadan removes them from the body making the person more healthy as a result. It seems to me a rather spurious argument tagged on to the religious motivation for fashionable reasons.

In truth, Ramadan is foremost a religious exercise. It is an act of willingly submitting oneself to God who in the Qur'an (2:183) prescribes fasting to Muslims, as to others before them, by whom Jews and Christians are meant. The purpose of the fast is explicitly stated: it is to be mindful of God.

Muslims are mindful of God by not giving in to their natural urges to eat, to drink and have sex. It requires an effort and by that effort they show how highly they regard their God in their lives, much higher than their very real bodily needs.

The stated purpose of the fast is also the reason that the observance of Ramadan involves a lot more than fasting. In order to be mindful of their God Muslims read the whole of the Qur'an during the month of Ramadan. In addition, they strengthen their bonds with family, neighbours and community. The poor are not forgotten either; Ramadan is pre-eminently the month of almsgiving.

Ton

Muslim Prayer

Pious Muslims pray five times a day; all Muslims should but not all Muslims are pious Muslims. Like people of other religions they do not always live up to the obligations of their faith. In particular younger people may be amiss in fulfilling their religious duties. They live much more in a culturally divided world than their parents who, it is said, tend to feel foremost at home in their culture of origin. Control of the mosques is in the hands of the older generation and young people often have little affinity with them. This may explain the fact that it is mostly middle-aged and elderly men who pass by our window five times a day on their way to the mosque nearly opposite our house.

This being said, one should not underestimate the power of prayer. It gives structure to the lives of pious Muslims by dividing their day into five fixed points, around which their day revolves. The hours are compulsory and cannot be changed at will. This does not mean that all pray at the same time to the minute. I often see men still entering the mosque for prayer while others are already on their way out.

Muslim prayer is very much an individual act of piety, even where many Muslims are together in the same mosque praying at more or less the same time. One Muslim I met at an interfaith meeting last year - and he had me thinking about it ever since - expressed his experience in this way: "Prayer gives me the opportunity to stand before the Almighty with nothing in between; it is paradise in front and hell at the back".

I am not sure whether I get him right, but he seems to express an experience that is not alien to me as a Christian either. When you are blessed in prayer with a deep awareness of God, as sometimes is the case, you know that you are face to face with the Absolute One, with Life and Happiness in person. Cut off from Him or Her you fall in an abyss of darkness and nothingness.

Ton