Weird reasons why people fast and what your real reason should be
August 8, 2010 by ImanK
It was lunch time and we were eating, well, except for the host. She told me she was fasting because it was Friday and every Friday she fasts, out of habit.
I’ve seen weird things in my life but this one confused me. A few conversations beforehand, I discovered that she didn’t believe in God anymore. So, the obvious perplexing question I had was why she would keep fasting if she was not doing it for God??
I guess because as Muslims, we get this question a lot. Why do you fast in Ramadan? I usually say that we do it for God to gain piety as the Quran says,
“O you who believe! fasting is prescribed for you, as it was prescribed upon those before you in order that you may attain taqwa.”[Surah al-Baqarah 2:183].
Notice that I translated “taqwa” as piety. Well, that’s not quite accurate. Recently, we were all gathered around and the same question came up, how do you translate this rich Arabic word “taqwa” into English?
Some say it is piety, some say fear, others say it is obedience to God. I’ve heard many translations but nothing quite encompasses the original Arabic word. The funny thing though is that if you leave it untranslated and just say taqwa, most Muslims know exactly what you mean by the word and sense a deep emotional feeling.
Here’s a good translation of taqwa I found:
Taqwa is obedience to God hoping for the mercy of God and it is staying away from the disobedience of God fearing the punishment of God.
And just by fasting properly, you can automatically gain taqwa. Before I fasted every year, I never imagined that would be the result, but when you do it properly, you would be amazed at how much taqwa you gain.
But do you think that the lady who fasts every Friday out of habit and not for God can gain taqwa? Most likely not.
People fast for weird reasons but if we want to feel full and take the maximum benefit from things in life, we need to know why we do things and not just do them because our ancestors did so or society tells us to do so.
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AA Iman
Thanks for the story.
By the way, was the lady muslim?
Wa alaikum assalaam Tammy. No she is not Muslim. I was talking with a sister in Greece and she mentioned that these days in Greece, it is rare to find Greek people fasting. You will even find priests not fasting either. It seems like a lost practice, except for in the Muslim communities, as a whole I mean.
Really liked the way you explained Taqwa! Made it soo clear.
Awareness for Allah,Allah’s consciousness.A term for taqwa and a quality of the Al Muttaqin(the Pious)
A reason to attain taqwa.Insch’Allah
http://www.jannah.org/ramadan/innerfasting.html
Very nice article indeed! Well, it is the magnificence of the Arabic language, of being able to enclose a whole concept and its layers of meanings, in just a word!
It is said that “Taqwa” is the limit people should not transgress, because when they do, bad things happen to them. However, when limits are recognized and accepted, they are not limits anymore. That is the main difference between acceptance and compromise and the difference between doing something as burden or engaging yourself wholeheartedly in it! There are basically two types of freedom, freedom “to” and freedom “from”.
Reading the article, I remembered the story of the stable-boy. One day, a man came in the stable. When he entered, he asked “what’s that awful smell?”. The stable-boy replied ” what smell?”
Abstaining from the pleasures of the flesh, the sight, the hearing the talking and the acting of anything bad, it increases our awareness and decreases our ignorance. It teaches us patience with ourselves and with others and it helps us become aware of the blessings we enjoy.
So, Ramadan is the lesson of a lifetime compressed in 30 days, in that we might become deprived of all those blessings but we still have to act accordingly. The fear should be, the one of the harm we inflict on ourselves due to our ignorance. And if piety is seen as a weakness by those who are arrogant, it is in essence the strength of character, of being free from the addiction of our desires and our egoistic tendencies.
Fasting is the way to attain Taqwa, and become better persons, if it is not a habitual practice or simply because we have to do it.
Gerasimos
some more salt ‘n pepper in our sawm for this Ramadhan from a young greek Muslimhttp://hamzatzortzis.blogspot.com/