The Ramadan Fast:
Muslims are woken up every morning by the local muezzin with a loud proclamation of their faith:
Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar …Allah is the greatest!
Lail-ha-Illalah…No one is worthy of worship
Vallahu Akbar…except Allah.
Allahu Akbar…Allah is the greatest!
Valillahi Hamd…All praise is for Allah alone.
Together with faith in one God, Allah, the Muslims perform five main religious duties known as arknuadim (the five “pillars of religion”), including the observance of fast (Roza). This observance of fast and the pilgrimage to Mecca are carried out particularly during the Muslim “holy” month of Ramadan and each ends with a special festival.
Ramadan is the ninth of the Muslim calendar and the Muslim call it a blessed month of self-purification, rededication, self-mastery and discipline of the body.
It was during the hot month of Ramadan that Prophet Mohammed., distressed by the rampant idolatry among his fellow Meccans, would retire with his family to a desert cave on Mount Hira and seek to discover the way of truth. It was, then, on one such occasion that he claimed to have had a deep experience of God calling him to become is prophet.
The Roza:
The fasting begins each day with sunrise and lasts until sunset. It consists in abstaining from food and beverages, from inhaling of tobacco smoke, and even from swallowing of spittle, smelling of perfume, taking injection, deliberate vomiting, genital intercourse, and intoxication. All Muslim male or female, who are adult, sound in mind and physically fit, are bound to fast throughout the month of Ramadan.
The main aim of fasting is to please God and to draw near him. There are also other moral, spiritual and social benefits from fasting. Fasting requires self-discipline and the control of one’s own desires. Devotees learn to give hospitality to those in need. Ramadan is traditionally also a time when Muslims try to devote themselves to meditation, prayer, and reading the Koran. Special, extra, night prayers are performed in the mosque. The last ten days of Ramadan are believed to be especially sacred. One of them is considered as the “Night of Power”, the occasion when the first koranic revelation came to Mohammed. Therefore, during this period some Muslims will stay in the mosque in continual worship and contemplation of God.
Id-ul-Fitr:
The final breaking of the fast of Ramadan is marked by a special three-day festival, the “Id-ul-Fitr” (the Lesser Festival). On this day the Muslims go to the mosque to perform special prayers of thanksgiving for the successful completion of the Ramadan fasting. When prayers are completed the Imam (the Leader) takes his place in the mimbar (pulpit) and delivers the Kutba (sermon) and ends with a munajat (supplication prayer). People join this prayer for the forgiveness of their sins or for obtaining any other favours spiritual or material such as recovery of sickness. The feasting continues throughout the day. Special dishes are prepared. Friends visit and greet each other with hugs and kisses (that is why in some parts of India it is called Mithi Id, the “feast of the embrace”), whilst they say “Id Mubarak” or “Chand Mubarak” (“a happy moon” to you, since it begins with the sighting of the moon). The festival is also characterized by almsgiving, and offerings are made to the poor in the name of God.
As Christians we can reflect on this feast as follows:
A month-long fasting and self-purification, followed by a joyful celebration of breaking of the fast on Id-ul-Fitr, symbolize our life in this world as a spiritual passage, a journey, a pilgrimage towards God, towards our”home”, in heaven. Seen from this point of view our great forty-day Lenten Season, traditionally characterized by fast and penance, prayers and almsgiving, followed by the Easter celebration, has for us the same meaning. In the Lenten Season the entire church as a community, a family, purifies itself during those forty days, and on the Easter day rejoices in our renewed encounter with the Risen Lord. We die with Christ and rise with him, anticipating our final encounter in Heaven.
This yearly cycle is repeated in a weekly cycle. Once each week, on the day on which the Church has called the Lord’s Day, she keeps the memory of the Lord’s Resurrection. In the early Church, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays were the days of fast in several ecclesial communities. If Friday fast was in remembrance of the death of Jesus, the Saturday fast was meant as weekly recall of the great paschal or Lenten fast. Thus, the following Sunday was highlighted as the day of the Lord’s Resurrection on which day Christians joyfully shared in the Eucharistic Meal of the Lord; alms were collected for the poor and the day was spent with works of charity and relaxation. Thus, Sundays and the Lord’s Supper symbolized for the early Christians, and it does symbolize for us, the anticipation and foretaste of our eternal joy and Banquet in Heaven, after our week-long life of pilgrimage of our daily life.
Hence, in a spirit of solidarity, we too may join our Muslim brothers and sisters in their joys of Id-ul-Fitr which marks the end of the Ramadan feast.
(from: Understanding Our Fellow Pilgrims, by the Sub-Committee for Inter-Religious Dialogue, Goa, 2000, pp.216-219)
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