Fasting, the Qur'an and history

Ramazan is the month in which mercy, abundance and forgiveness rain down upon humanity. This mercy and forgiveness is like a divine intervention that reintroduces to one another people who have grown increasingly estranged, closes the distances that have come between them amid life's cares or through their own ambitions and rushing about, and warms relationships that have grown cold.

Of course, the manner in which people take part in this time, their excitement and sincerity, must differ. A person can resist even this allure that comes right up to his door and envelops his whole soul and being; he can also choose, without caring at all, to be indifferent to this time, and there are those who do so, who are able to do so.

Ramazan does not work as a fate; it does not, of course, take away a person's will. Like everything about religion, it leaves the person a field of opportunity as to whether to take part or not. But it is a field such that it is a difficult field opened by choosing the difficult course, like closing one's eyes and choosing the darkness when one cannot extinguish the light that illuminates our world.

That is why the doors of guidance are opened before a person as a mercy, in such a way as to leave him no excuse. To choose otherwise in this matter is much harder than being swept up in the rhythm of Ramazan, which operates as an attractive flow.

We have mentioned before that the flow of a festival leaves no room for relativity or for a different behavior or stance; staying outside it, behaving differently, is like rowing against the current. Doing what is required once you have joined it is of course harder than not doing it. Here the limits of the human being, the doors opening onto infinity, and the power of infinity that draws these limits, all become visible at the same time.

The fast, which brings you into the same world at the same moment with people from every corner of the globe whom you do not know and will never meet face to face, is in one respect a reflection of a will against desires, but at the same time it is an absolute submission to the truth that makes us all alike as human beings. This geographical absence of distance actually acquaints us as human beings with our own contemporaries; we live this in practice.

But when felt in the dimension in which it was made obligatory upon us just as it was made obligatory upon those before us, it is an act that binds us from our ancient past to our future. Whatever kind of history we may have lived, whatever stages we may have passed through, the fast reminds us of a constant that never changes, a power that transcends history and time.

It is a verse that exposes the supra-historical dimension of the superstition of historicism, which imagines some human-favoring accomplishment in the flow of history.

Where humanity, at its most advanced level, has arrived and come to rest is corruption, exploitation, oppression and arrogance at their most advanced level.

Expressing this in the most sophisticated philosophical languages does not remove its dimension of jahiliyya, of alienation from its own being.

On the contrary, more knowledgeable people can sometimes be led astray by far simpler, even foolish, reasons or arguments. There have been sages among the ancient Greek philosophers who realized this: "God tests His very intelligent servants with very simple things and watches them lose, laughing."

The fast, which was made obligatory upon those before us as well, gathers us at the same time with the people of ancient history and makes us contemporaries. In fact, together with many other things that make us contemporary. It is not only the fast that makes us contemporaries of the Prophet Noah, of Shuayb, of Abraham, of Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Jesus (AS), and of the Prophet Muhammad (S).

The Qur'an, which was sent down to our world in the month of Ramazan from the Owner of that history, weaves that contemporaneity into our minds stitch by stitch. Of course, to the extent that we keep our mind, our heart and our soul open to it. To the extent that we believe in the unseen, establish our prayer properly and spend from the provision Allah has given us. Of course, believing that everything we possess is a provision that Allah has given us. Knowing that others also have a right in this provision, and that it will be blessed only by being shared...

These are the fundamental conditions for being open to that book's offer of guidance. When we fulfill those conditions, the door of guidance we enter makes us contemporaries of the heroes of the stories told there, stories imagined to belong to the past, and even makes us a part of those stories. Without fulfilling those conditions, when we read the Book like an ordinary book, it is quite natural for those stories to seem like mythology.

The fast and the Qur'an are acts that complement each other in the construction of a Muslim mind, consciousness and subject. The book was not given to the human being at once and as a text between pages. It was sent down upon the heart, and for that the heart was first prepared, through the training of a trustworthy teacher from among us.

Allah the Exalted bestowed His favor by sending among us one of ourselves to recite to us the verses of Allah, to purify us, and to teach us the book and wisdom. One of the ways of purifying us was the training of that one from among us, and an important way of this training was the fast.

The fast instills in us the awareness that provision is from Allah, as a condition for the book to be guidance, and teaches the necessity of spending from that provision on others as well. The fast is an important lesson, and the most effective one possible, that makes a person considerate toward others. It reminds us that we do not have an unlimited, unbridled right of disposal over what we possess, and it does not merely remind; it trains us on this path.

The fast is at the same time a preparation for reading the Qur'an, for understanding and feeling it better, just like the prayer. Without fulfilling those conditions, one cannot be a contemporary of the Qur'an that is read, cannot live in the same climate, and never enters the same depth of meaning.

But when those conditions are properly fulfilled, the verses of the Qur'an truly begin to open themselves as verses, without even needing exegesis; they draw us in, make us a party in the world of the stories, and say what they have to say leaving no room for any relativity.

Otherwise we remain stuck on morphology, on syntax, on history, on transmission.