Ramadan: Beyond the Self, Towards the Lord

Ramadan is here -- and more than ever it has become increasingly important for Muslims to refrain from reducing it to the material. While fasting surely has its health and worldly benefits, an overemphasis on those aspects, and a tendency to ascribe centrality to them, completely subverts the soul of Ramadan and the purpose behind it. The reduction of Islamic practices to an incentive of material or individualist well-being is in effect a liberal remaking of Islam. In essence fasting cultivates a self that is conscious of the truth: that we do not have the right to food, water, and sex when Allah decrees such. The feeling of hunger and thirst, and the inability to do away with them despite having the means to, is meant to reinforce within our souls the recognition of Allah's ultimate power. As Ali Harfouch argues, fasting is a way of recognizing our own limitations and vulnerability as humans, and not our individualism and autonomy.