A Ramadan Diary
As part of our efforts to share the experiences of those new to Islam, we asked one Muslim convert to keep a diary of his experiences in the upcoming month of Ramadan. Please use the forum if you wish to discuss this topic.
Day: O
This is my eighth Ramadan. If I am honest I approached the first one with no little trepidation; the prospect of going without food or drink for so long was something I’d never had to face before, real hunger being alien to me in my life at that point. The first time is hard, and I could think of little else other than how thirsty I was or how long until I could eat. It gets easier though, to the point where now if I think about Ramadan, the fasting is only a small part of it. There is still a tinge of apprehension at the test to come, but it is soothed by experience, and the knowledge that the fear of a thing is usually worse than its reality.
One of the funny things about Ramadan is that there are certain topics that come up every year, and the same feelings and discussions are repeated and recycled. “They’ll be long fasts this year”, people say. As the Islamic calendar is based on the lunar calendar, which is ten days shorter than the 365 of the solar calendar, the month of Ramadan gets a bit earlier each year. This has a pretty big impact, as the time between suhur, the pre-dawn meal, and iftar, the breaking of the fast at sunset, can be less than ten hours in the winter, or nearly twenty in the hot days of summer.
As we await sighting of the new moon, and with it the onset of Ramadan, I am looking forward to the increased level of communal activity which goes into overdrive, the iftar invitations and the challenge of tarawih. But most of all I’m looking forward to that indescribable feeling that this is a special time where you can achieve extraordinary things…
Day: 1
And so it begins, with breakfast at 2am. I had been looking forward to this Ramadan because If I’m honest I don’t think I’ve done my previous ones properly. Sure, I’ve followed the rules carefully, but I haven’t always made great use of my time. My weakness is that I spend all day thinking about the fact that I can’t eat or drink, even if I’m not particularly hungry or thirsty! If one of the purposes of Ramadan is to get people to empathise with the suffering of the poor, then I’ve not been doing a great job; poor people don’t obsess over how much longer they have to wait to eat because they don’t know how long, and they don’t gorge themselves when they can eat, unlike many Muslims (myself included) at the opening of the fast. If you spend the night trying to ‘stock up’ to make the fast easier, you’re not really getting into the spirit of the thing (not that overeating ever really helps). I guess I’m ready to grow up and take it on the chin.
The first fast has been good, and my body already feels a little purged by the experience. I have to confess, though: I over ate at iftar time and felt like I had undone much of the benefit of fasting. This isn’t just through greed, though; after twenty hours of not eating, the space in the stomach shrinks and you become full much more quickly than you expect. I will try hard to moderate my portions for the rest of the month.
Day: 3
Much happier today. I’ve had very modest portions of food for breakfast and dinner and I’ve felt much better for it. Food may sound like a benign topic but it is very important in Islam. I am reminded of the hadith (saying of the Prophet, peace be upon him):
“The human being has never filled a container worse than his stomach. Hence, it will be sufficient for the son of Adam to satisfy his hunger with a few bites to strengthen his backbone.
If he must eat his fill then he should allow for one third food, one third water, and third air.”
How much healthier the (western) world would be if we all followed that edict. All of the diets and pills and surgeries and therapies that people turn to in order to control their weight, instead of simply learning to control their appetites. I am not really overweight but I realise that I clearly eat far more than I need to. A little research shows the many proven health benefits of fasting.
I’ve also managed to keep myself busy with useful things and not dwelt on the fasting. I don’t know about anyone else but for me the best thing about Ramadan is that your sense of things is heightened and your actions feel so much more deliberate. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said “When Ramadan comes, the gates of Paradise are opened, the gates of Hell are closed, and the devils are chained up”. I feel this keenly, as though previous influences on my actions have been lifted and I can make decisions with unusual clarity. It’s almost as if time slows down. I know that sounds a bit abstract, but if you’ve fasted then I think you’ll understand.
Day: 6
Bad breath. One of the consequences of not eating or drinking for an extended period of time is that you develop fiendishly bad breath. Part of this is apparently due to the chemical activity in the stomach once it is emptied of food, and part is due to oral hygiene. Though it is reassuring to read the hadith, “the smell of the mouth of the fasting person is better to Allah than the smell of musk”, you are acutely aware that mere humans find it rather more challenging, and good manners demand that you take care to avoid assaulting their olfactory senses unnecessarily. Good oral hygiene, brushing after meals, drinking plenty of water, avoiding potent foods such as garlic etc, goes some way to improving the situation.
Day: 8
Day: 11
Fasting feels normal now. It’s taken over a week but I no longer think about food during the day, I can prepare food for others who are not fasting and not be tempted by it. I’ve settled into a routine of reading Qur’an in the morning around the time of the Fajr prayer, and have been trying to make a habit of going to the mosque for this prayer. Ramadan is a great time to reevaluate your life and how you live, to make ‘resolutions’ and positive changes; I got rid of my TV during a previous Ramadan, and have never looked back. There is a poignant hadith where the Prophet (peace be upon him) says “Perhaps a fasting person will get nothing from his fast save hunger, and perhaps the one who stands to pray at night will get nothing from his standing except sleeplessness.” It is a valuable reminder that fasting in the month of Ramadan, and indeed all worship, is really just a means to an end, and if the action is not done properly then there is no benefit from doing it. What stops a person getting any benefit or reward from fasting and prayer? Other hadith give a clue: “Whoever does not give up false speech and evil actions, then Allah is not in need of his leaving his food and drink”, and “actions are by intention”. If there is no change or improvement in our thoughts, our speech and our actions, then what has been the point of fasting? If actions are judged by our intentions then what should be the intention of fasting? As far as I understand it, to improve our conduct, to increase our worship and ultimately through these come closer to Allah.
Day: 15
I remember before I converted to Islam, I had a conversation with a Muslim about prayer. She told me a hadith about when the number of daily prayers in Islam was fixed at five. In summary, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) went to see God, who told him that there were to be fifty daily prayers. The Prophet accepted this message, and as he returned he met the Prophet Musa (Moses), who told Muhammad that this would be too many for the people. So Muhammad returned to God, pleaded to have the number reduced, and eventually settled on the number five (full hadith here – number 309).
Now, for someone whose previous conception of religion had been Christmas and Easter celebrations, with a weekly visit to Church if you were really devout, the idea of committing myself to even five daily prayers seemed like an enormous undertaking. How would I get up for the morning prayer? How would I stay awake for the night prayer? How would I fit the daytime prayers into my busy schedule? So the idea of fifty daily prayers seemed insane; “You wouldn’t have time for anything else!” I cried. “Exactly” she replied. And so it is; however unrealistic and excessive it may seem to the irreligious at first, Islam is very clear on this point. Allah says in the Qur’an, “I did not create the Jinn and mankind except to worship Me…”. It’s not just that worship is the main purpose of our lives; it is the only purpose. Now clearly we cannot spend our entire lives praying in the obvious sense of the word; we must eat, sleep, work and so on, but Islam’s concept of worship is much wider than that. To worship God all the time is to remember Him in everything you do, from washing to giving charity, and to follow His rules and the example of His Prophet (peace be upon him) in all your actions, from what you eat to how you fight a war. And so a street-sweeper can be more pious than an Imam, an illiterate man higher in God’s view than a scholar; “The best among you in the sight of God is the most righteous.” (Qur’an, 49:13).
