The real challenge of Ramadan

 It's not merely fasting but also about getting to know how the less fortunate live.

When I was a child, Ramadan was a month I looked forward to, as well as dreaded.

Ramadan meant Hari Raya – new clothes, gifts of money and other pleasures. But to a child becoming old enough to fast, it also meant some hardship and missing out some comforts.

My mother did the obligatory fasting during Ramadan and often the other non-obligatory ones too, which could add up to a couple more months of fasting every year.

For me, one month of Ramadan was all I could handle, and that too with a lot of persuasion, encouragement and occasional blackmail (no lunch for the day!).

We children started with half-day fasts. That’s quite hard when you’re used to devouring everything edible in and around the house. But we made it – mostly – and after a while graduated to the proper full-day fasts.

Today, however, I see many Muslim families either encouraging or pushing their primary-school age children into full days of fasting.

I’ve seen and heard parents who proudly brag about their kids doing a full month of full-day fasting.

That isn’t asked for in Islam. There’s a reason that you’re expected to fulfil this obligation only when you come of age. When you’re a small and growing child, cutting off calories and hydration has a critical impact on your physical and mental growth.

Kids need food to fuel the growth of their brain and bones and muscles at such a critical period of their life. They need constant hydration for the same reason. Let them grow up and fast when they’re ready and are obligated to. You can have your parental pride in some other areas.

Another thing I’m not used to is seeing Ramadan as a huge festival. Sure, I can understand the sprawling Pasar Ramadan. They’ve become a much-loved annual staple in Malaysia’s culture, whether you’re a Muslim or not. I can’t wait to sample the many Pasar Ramadan around me.

What bothers me rather is the luxurious meals and events people organise and pay for. I remember going to company-paid breaking of fast dinners at luxury hotels, along with many others who saw such events as their right.

I went reluctantly and spent the whole evening wondering whether this is right.

Hey, who am I to tell anybody what is or isn’t right? That’s a fair enough challenge, especially given that I often challenge others, especially those who claim to have special knowledge of the faith, about what they themselves claim to be right or wrong.

I certainly won’t quote you chapter or verse of old religious texts to support me. What’s without debate, however, is what the Quran says about fasting – and that’s something anybody can see for themselves.

There’s been fasting even before Islam, as the Quran makes clear. It also makes clear the ways of fasting, as well as the exceptions. These aren’t so complicated that you’d need to have them explained to you – unless you actually believe Islam is so complicated that you personally cannot hope to ever understand it.

Among the many reasons that we fast, apart from fulfilling God’s command, is to practice self-restraint as well as to experience the hardship of those less fortunate than us, with the hope that we become better human beings for it.

Given this, then let’s be clear: having feasts during Ramadan, while the world, including the parts right around us, often goes hungry and thirsty can’t be what fasting is all about.

I doubt I’d persuade many people, if any at all, to turn down some expensive breaking of fast dinners, especially if paid for by somebody else. But at least I can prick your conscience a little bit and perhaps you would come to see things differently – then I may have done some good. Or not.

Similarly, if you finished a whole month of fasting by stuffing a few extra kilogrammes, then perhaps something has gone wrong.

Finishing a whole month of restraining yourself without ending up being hungry, thirsty and tired – and losing some weight – somehow must have been signs of you missing the point.

There are others who can tell you what to do to gain as many blessings as possible during the holy month. This is what I can tell you though – the real blessings of Ramadan is if you had faithfully fulfilled God’s commands and restrained yourself to know and feel how the others less fortunate have to live.

If you accept that, then perhaps your real challenge would be that of how you could make the life of somebody else at least slightly better during Ramadan, and hopefully beyond. Giving the obligatory alms does help, but apart from checking off a box for many Muslims, it doesn’t change anybody’s life for the better.

Not everyone continues to draw full wages while doing less work and working fewer hours during Ramadan. Many can’t look forward to special bonuses for Hari Raya that many others will get, or get special gifts and rewards because that’s what people do for Hari Raya nowadays.

I remember the fasting and Hari Raya of my childhood partly because they were tense times for my parents, trying to squeeze in a few extra ringgit for new clothes for us as well as pay for food for visitors over the Raya period.

Sometimes the tense time got extra tense when the times got extra tough and eking out a living in the village became extra hard – family illness, poor farm crops or fishing hauls, emergency expenses etc.

Somehow we survived, obviously – and I’m here offering you one version of how Ramadan and Hari Raya aren’t always times of great joy and celebrations.

In those days, hardly anybody expected a helping hand during the tough times, because almost everyone around was just as poor and desperate.

The world has changed quite a bit for many people since then, myself included.

But for those whose hard life hasn’t changed much, some help from the rest of us can make the period a happier, blessed and joyful period for them – and for us, too.

Selamat Berpuasa, everybody. - FMT

 The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.