Fasting against arrogance and transgression, an ancient teacher

An event that reminds us of the sameness within all our differences, however much we differ in our lives

Ramadan. An attraction that, however far we may drift from one another, closes all distances when its time comes and brings us close. A reminder that, however much we change from the point at which we started, recalls to us the essence, the principle, the stance that does not and will not change in us. Fasting, which was made obligatory for those before us, and made obligatory for us as well.

How far before us? Even for the first human being? Is it not inevitable that an act made obligatory from the first human to the last should also be a subject concerning the essence of our humanity?

One way of thinking about the human being passes through thinking about fasting. With all the meaning, nature and consequences it contains.

Fasting is one of the most important acts through which a human being can feel to the marrow that he is human. It is an act in which he sees, recalls and experiences that, as a mortal, he is a being capable of reining in every desire, every lust, every wish.

The modern world always treats the human being together with his rights, always foregrounds him from this side. And all the rights concern only the dimension of the human being that consists of his wishes, desires and demands. Human rights are, of course, a vital matter in the case of people who are despised, oppressed and wronged. But the human being is not a being that consists only of rights. Not a being that has only desires, wishes and demands. The human being is also a being with responsibility. In fact, a significant part of the problems experienced regarding human rights stems from the unbridled excess of other people's demands and wishes. People's desire to rule over other people, their focusing only on their own wishes without considering the needs of others, the desire for power over other people and over nature, turns the human being from being the noblest of creatures in the world into the most important problem that has fallen upon all beings.

The most important way of coping with this significant problem is for the human being to remember that he is a being with responsibility. Wishes that are not reined in in any way, using to the utmost the available possibilities for doing right now whatever one feels like, and pushing to the utmost even the possibilities that do not exist. This is defined in the Qur'an as the state in which the human being transgresses his limits and plunges into rebellious tyranny. "The human being has overstepped bounds and fallen into rebelliousness, because he has regarded himself as self-sufficient" (Surah al-Alaq).

Tughyan (rebellious transgression) and istighna (self-sufficiency) are attitudes that give birth to each other. As long as the human being considers what he has in this world to be from himself, as long as he supposes he knows everything or a great deal, as long as he thinks that what he knows or has is enough for him, as long as he thinks that he can dispose as he wishes of all the beings that have been given to him or over which his power can extend, he plunges into tughyan, he transgresses his limits.

Yet nothing belongs to us. We know nothing but what He has taught us. A series of things remind us every day that everything we know is mere conjecture, and we must prick up our ears and take our counsel. Fasting is an act that helps us think rightly by making this way of thinking a complete mode of conduct, a way of life.

It teaches us in practice that nothing we have in this life, beginning with our body, belongs to us and that we do not have the right to dispose of it as we wish. I cannot say my body is mine and I will behave as I please. Using it as I please has an aspect that violates the bodies of others. The truth is, not even a single breath of this body is under my control. Fasting is an effective teacher that, starting from thinking about our own body, teaches us our responsibility toward others. It is a teacher that most effectively engraves on the soul and the consciousness the lesson that, just as my body is not mine, the world does not consist of me alone, I am not alone in the world, and I am responsible toward others too.

Last year fasting came in a way somewhat different from usual. This year we are repeating the same condition. In fact, for some time now the world has been living a state of fasting, almost compulsorily, independent of Ramadan. It does this, either voluntarily or compulsorily owing to the curfew restrictions imposed from time to time, by abstaining from many things it can do in normal times. Those who have shut themselves up at home, although they carry on life at home as if nothing had happened, have in this confinement something that recalls fasting and fulfills its task to a degree.

Because of this social lockdown we are living through, we cannot greet Ramadan this year either with the great excitement that manifests itself in intense socializing. We are far from the atmosphere of the communal iftars, tarawih prayers, shopping and gatherings that have gradually become Ramadan's inescapable habits.

We breathe the sorrowful air created by having moved away from these habits. Yet perhaps, in fasting, it was the turn of those habits, which are the accidentals of Ramadan, as well; perhaps we need to reflect on the dimensions in them that distance us from the meaning of fasting, and to fast from them too.

Thereby perhaps we can better grasp that the month of Ramadan is also a month of itikaf and, above all, the month of the Qur'an. May Ramadan, as a month in which we can very well grasp and live the place of the Qur'an in our lives, be blessed.