Will we be able to see ourselves in the mirror of Ramadan?

"Fasting has been prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you…"

Every Ramadan this verse descends anew into our lives. Not only as a ruling, but as a reminder. Not only as a call to worship, but as an invitation to belonging. It stretches through time like an invisible rope binding us to the past, to those before us; to believers who fasted in deserts, in cities, in mountain villages, in palace courtyards. When Ramadan comes, a person steps out of his own calendar and enters another time. The hours are the same hours, but time is now a different time. We live in the same city, yet we breathe in a different climate.

Ramadan is not merely one month among the months; it is an identity, a bond, a kinship.

Life divides us. Our professions, our titles, our class positions, our ideological alignments, our ethnic and cultural origins… We all live in our own small universes, amid the noise of our own agendas. There are invisible walls between us. We can live on the same street, in the same apartment building, even in the same house, and remain strangers to one another. Living in the same country, we can breathe foreign climates and different airs, and remain as far from one another as whole worlds.

When Ramadan comes, these walls thin out, at least at the level of consciousness. The rich grow hungry, and so do the poor. The ruler falls silent, and so does the worker. The city-dweller awaits the hour of iftar, and so does the villager. Women, men, young, old… We all breathe, watching for the same moment. We listen to the same call to prayer, drink the same water, share the same date.

An unparalleled experience of equality is lived everywhere. This is not political equality; nor is it legal equality. It is equality in servitude, equality in being, equality before the manifestation of the truth of belonging to God, equality in being addressed by that manifestation.

Fasting is the quietest yet most fundamental struggle a person wages against his own body. Hunger and thirst are biological commands. The body says "eat," says "drink," says "do what you want." Fasting says "stop." To be able to feel this "stop" command, to be able to will it, is the line that separates man from the animal. The power to resist the biological command that comes from within… Will begins here.

Today everything is built on speed and pleasure. Consume, hurry, make others hurry, don't miss out, try, taste, spend… The language of advertisements, the language of the market, the language of screens all say the same thing: "Want it and have it immediately." Ramadan, however, places a brake in a person's hand. "Don't possess, be patient," it says. "Think before you eat," it says. "Be silent and listen to what is said," it says. This is exactly what we call an exercise of will.

Of course, there is also the fact of Ramadan consumption, of iftar turning into a separate industry of consumption and pleasure, and we do not overlook that either. Some are not idle against fasting; income comes in the guise of fasting. If we do not fast, should we not even break the fast at iftar, are we that much infidels? Even so, even that serves Ramadan; it makes the existence and effectiveness of Ramadan as a climate felt all the more, lets the one who does not hear hear, and shows the one who does not see.

Ramadan is not only an individual act of worship, but also a social resistance.

Throughout the modern period, especially in some countries, great efforts were expended to withdraw religious life from the public sphere. Religion was to be imprisoned in the private sphere. Worship was to be reduced to individual conscience. Yet Ramadan does not hide itself. It is visible in the street, felt in the market, talked about in the neighborhood. The rush to make it to iftar in front of the bakeries, the mukabele circles in the mosques, the aid parcels, the iftar invitations… Ramadan says, "I am here."

It is no coincidence that even the harshest secularizing policies of the Republican era could not fully touch Ramadan. The alphabet changes, the clothing changes, the education system changes; but the decision of millions, for one month, with the same intention, to resist their own biological power, to stand against the command of that power (fasting), is not easily erased. Because Ramadan is not just a ritual; it is memory. It is a consciousness transmitted from generation to generation.

We cannot say that we have studied these cultural and social codes of Ramadan enough. Sociology books mostly describe the line of secularization. They enumerate the effects of modernization on religion. Yet when viewed through the mirror of Ramadan, the picture changes.

Religiosity cannot be measured by certain political-attitude statistics. Fasting, alms, iftar tables, mukabele circles… These are indicators of a way of life.

Ramadan is an atmosphere. It is a speech-event. That it is the month in which the Qur'an was revealed deepens this atmosphere even more. In Ramadan the Qur'an is not only read; it is heard anew. Debates over historical context are set aside, and the verse addresses the person of today. It speaks "now and here."

This month is also an opportunity to read ourselves.

But the mirror of Ramadan does not always reflect pleasant images. A heart disciplined by hunger must be filled with compassion. A language that says "While we have our own poor, why should we help others?" damages the spirit of fasting. Attitudes that do not themselves spend in charity but also prevent others from spending run counter to Ramadan's call to compassion.

And there is the matter of nostalgia. The question "Where are the old Ramadans?" is asked anew every year. Perhaps every generation longs for the Ramadan of its own childhood. But to ignore the present while beautifying the past is a kind of ingratitude. Every age has its own possibilities and beauties. The book fairs set up today in mosque courtyards, the aid campaigns that young people organize on social media, the iftar tables shared simultaneously from all corners of the world… These too are the Ramadans of this age.

Ramadan means not only individual purification, but ummah consciousness.

What happens in Gaza, in Jerusalem, in other oppressed geographies of the world is felt more deeply in Ramadan. The symbolic experience of hunger makes us aware of real hunger. Our iftar tables may be rich; but if somewhere there are people breaking their fast under bombs, the mirror of Ramadan unsettles us.

This month is a month of confronting not only our own selves but also the course of the world.

Ramadan reminds us of unity, but it also shows us the lack of unity. We say believers are brothers; yet we mostly fail to fulfill the requirements of brotherhood. Perhaps the real call of Ramadan is hidden here: to be able to share the same fate just as we are able to sit at the same table.

When Ramadan comes, the world slows down a little. A gap opens up amid the daily rush. In that gap a person hears his own voice. The beating of his heart, the ache of his conscience, the trembling of his prayer…

As we welcome Ramadan, let us see it not merely as a calendar month but as a mirror. A mirror for looking at ourselves, our society, our history and our future. While we go hungry, let us open our hearts too. While we are silent, let us cleanse our speech as well. While we enlarge our iftar tables, let us enlarge our compassion too.

For Ramadan comes and goes. But what remains of it depends on our will.

May Ramadan shake us, may fasting hold us, may our being be set free, and may it reunite us with ourselves and with our Lord.