The Spiritual Meaning and Purpose of the Disciplines and Practices of Ramadhan in the Life of Believers: A Sufi Muslim Perspective
By Prof. Henry Francis
B. Espiritu, New Age Islam
4 May 2021
The Holy Month Of Ramadhan Is An Auspicious
Time To Be Grateful To Our Beloved Allah For Giving Us Another Opportunity To
Observe Fasting And Gain The Benefits From This Spiritual Exercise
Main Points:
1.
Fasting during Ramadan a spiritual
exercise.
2.
Abstaining from drinking, eating and
from other carnal needs are training activities for us in our daily struggle
against the evil.
3.
Sufi saints always insist that while
fasting, it becomes mandatory to remember that the fast is not confined to our
gustatory and gastronomic acts only.
4.
May Allah help us all at this time
of the COVID pandemic.
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The holy
month of Ramadhan is an auspicious time to be grateful to our Beloved Allah for
giving us another opportunity to observe fasting and gain the benefits from
this spiritual exercise. In His divine wisdom, All-Merciful Allah, who is the
Lord of both our bodies, minds and spirits, prescribed a spiritual exercise
specifically for our own benefit so that through this practice of fasting, we
can gradually deny gratifications that are even lawful, such as eating and
drinking from dawn to sundown, so our spirits will be strong to firmly deny all
sinful and unlawful acts. Ramadhan fasting is established by our Beloved Allah
for our own good. He establishes fasting not out of tyranny, caprice or of
unreasonable whim.
The Holy
Qur’an clearly declares the very purpose of fasting during this holy month: “Oh you who believe, fasting is prescribed
for you as it was prescribed for those before you, so that you may guard
against evil…” (Surah Baqarah 2:183). From this holy verse, we can reflect
that training our hearts, minds and souls to detest evil is the very purpose
why our Beloved Allah prescribes fasting for us. Abstaining from drinking,
eating and from other carnal needs are simply training activities for us in our
daily struggle against the evil of our self-gratification and our wanton
appetites for sin, worldliness and carnality. Our Holy Prophet Muhammad (may
the peace of Allah be upon him and his Companions) had clearly made this very
important point that it is not hunger or thirst and our self-denial of food and
drink that reaches Allah but what Allah is interested in, is the result of
genuine fasting within the devotee’s heart; which is the believer’s firmness in
denying his evil-commanding self within (Nafs
Ammarah).
Sufi saints
of Sunni Islam always insist on this: that while doing fasting, it becomes
mandatory for us to remember that the fast is not confined to our gustatory and
gastronomic acts only. It is training in observance of abstinence of all parts
of our body and senses that is prone to sin as the mark of our obedience to our
Beloved Allah so that He may be pleased with us. The reason why humans are
being considered superior to all other creatures of Allah is the human capacity
to control, delay, or even deny his bodily demands for a higher goal or lofty
purpose. Sufi saints stress that the aim of life and all our acts of servitude
to Allah is not just to avoid hell and earn paradise, for that would be very
self-serving, very egotistical, superficial and very petty. For Sufi Muslims,
the very intention of all our acts of worship is to gain the love of Allah and
to please Him; in the words of Hazrat Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi (may Allah
illumine his grave), to merit being called Allah’s “Wali” (friend) or His “ashiq” (lover) and “Habib” (beloved).
Furthermore,
the Sufi saints of Sunni Islam remind us not to be too legalistic to simply
confine ourselves only to the external forms and rules on fasting, but to
transcend the external aspects of fasting by reflecting upon the very spirit
(ruhaniyyah), true intention (niyyah) and inward reality (haqiqah) of fasting:
that is, our Beloved Allah enjoined fasting for us so we can tame and control
our hedonistic and egotistic self. For this essay, I will quote one example to
exemplify this point. Externally, we deny the hold of the tongue’s appetite
upon us when we fast—that is the external legal demand of fasting. But let us
consider the tongue and how we can still utilize the tongue in sinning, so that
even though we are not eating or drinking during Holy Ramadhan, we still commit
various hurtful offenses against our Beloved Allah and against our fellow
humans. The tongue can be used wrongly for lying, slander, abuse, hurling
insults, and worst of all; backbiting and gossiping. The inner reality of
fasting is therefore to deny the tongue its power to commit offenses against
our Beloved Allah and to avoid hurting our fellow humans. The tongue’s desired
use would be for truth, for spreading the good news of love, peace and harmony
to everyone, for teaching respect to one-and-all, using our tongues to share
words of kindness to everyone, and for spreading peace in the world.
Frankly
speaking, simply fasting on drinks and food but engaging our tongues in sinful
and unkind words and deeds betray the very purpose of fasting as set-forth by
our Beloved Allah, which is to train our spirit to fight evil coming from our
“evil-commanding self” (Nafs Ammarah).
There is indeed a very great spiritual wisdom coming from the “Naseehat” (spiritual advice) of Hazratan
Hazrat Abu Bakr Siddiq, the first Khalifah-e-Mutlaq
(the Paramount Caliph [Successor]) of the Holy Prophet when he said:
"Fasting of the tongue or the stomach is only a mirror and a shadow of the
real fast. The real fast is the fasting of the heart from all things that
displease Allah and fasting of our mind, tongue and actions from breaking the
hearts of other creatures of Allah." (Naseehat-e-Abu Abu Bakr
Siddiq-e-Akbar [Advice from Abu Bakr the Truthful, the Great]; p. 72.).
May this
Holy Ramadhan fasting become a spiritual mirror of our true standing as Allah’s
slaves. May our struggles, failures and victories over our egotistical self and
our hedonistic senses during this holy month will show us the true reflection
of our real self when compared to the "mirror" of Allah’s beautiful
divine character—as to how we are yet so very far in becoming Allah’s friends (Wali-Ul-Llah), lovers (Ashiq-Ul-Llah) and beloved (Habib-Ul-Llah). Keeping these points in
view, there is yet tremendous scope for correction and betterment of one’s self
during this holy month. But we must remind ourselves that the effort we have
expended in the taming of our unruly self, along with our exercises of
self-denial during fasting should not just only be for one month, but for the
rest of our remaining ephemeral earthly lives. At the end of Ramadan Sharif, we
should make an all-out effort to continue the spiritual gains we have attained
during this blessed month for the rest of the year, by the grace and mercy of
our All-Forgiving and All-Merciful Allah alone.
I sincerely
pray that our Beloved Allah grant us the opportunity to observe Holy Ramadan in
its true spirit, as outlined by our great Sunni Ulama (scholars) and exemplary
Sufi Murshid (preceptors). As we continually perform this holy training of
controlling our unbridled senses and our untamed egos during this holy month,
let us offer whatever merits we have for a peaceful world, for harmony and
world unity and Allah’s blessings for one-and-all: Muslims and non-Muslims
alike. May the Most Compassionate Allah make it easy for all of us to complete
the number of days of the fasting month. May our Beloved Allah Taala, the
All-Merciful assist us with His grace and mercy so that we will be able to
fulfil all our acts of worship during this holy month, and may He be pleased by
all these manifestations of our humble servanthood to Him. May our Beloved
Allah help us all who are presently going through trials in our lives whatever these
may be, especially at this time of the COVID pandemic. For the sake of this
most holy of all months, Ramadhan Sharif, may we have the grace to bear our
trials with courage and resignation to the holy will of our Almighty Allah.
Ameen, summa Ameen (Amen, and again Amen). Ramadhan Kareem Mubarak to all.
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Prof. Henry Francis B. Espiritu is Associate
Professor-7 of Philosophy and Asian Studies at the University of the
Philippines (UP), Cebu City, Philippines. He was former Academic Coordinator of
the Political Science Program at UP Cebu from 2011-2014. He was former
Coordinator of Gender and Development (GAD) Office at UP Cebu from 2015-2019.
His research interests include Islamic Studies particularly Sunni
jurisprudence, Islamic feminist discourses, Islam in interfaith dialogue
initiatives, Islamic environmentalism, Classical Sunni Islamic pedagogy, the
writings of Imam Al-Ghazali on pluralism and tolerance, Islam in the Indian
Subcontinent, Turkish Sufism, Ataturk Studies, Ottoman Studies, Muslim-Christian
Dialogue, Middle Eastern Affairs, Peace Studies and Public Theology.
New Age
Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in
Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In
Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women
in West, Islam Women and Feminism