Friday, March 29, 2024 | Ramadan 18, 1445 H
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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Fasting - purification of body, mind and soul

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Shared Thoughts


To give yourself the capacity to refrain from your day-to-day pleasures for the sake of your Lord is a high level of faith. When you are fasting, you are required to resist evil; when you resist the devil that means you are on the straight path.


The faithful get to transform themselves into agents of positive moral and social deeds. Fasting for the sake of God strengthens one’s spiritual life. Fasting is a blessing in the sense that it is a sort of self-examination — that is when you find out if there is anything wrong in your life. During fasting, it becomes beneficial to ask God for forgiveness and seek His guidance and blessings.


Fasting is meant to redirect hearts away from worldly activities and to focus on God. Fasting trains you to acquire self-control, discipline yourself and understand the deprived.


Those who undergo this faculty of fasting do so for the sake of God-consciousness — a constant awareness of God’s divine presence throughout the various routines of daily life. Self-growth and self-improvement are only possible through God consciousness. When fasting, a believer should try to keep his mood and appearance as normal as possible despite the hunger pangs he may be feeling. There is no need of announcing to the whole world that you are fasting with chapped lips and a frowning face. The Almighty is the one who knows your secret sacrifice and He will reward you accordingly.


Bitter as it may sound, some people still maintain their habits of wasting food. Most people would want to try something different and turn their cooking to be adventurous, but Ramadhan gives wonderful opportunities to remind ourselves of why we should serve only what is enough or serve the food in buffet style so that people take only as much as they want. Then keep the rest of the untouched food for later use or donate it to the poor and destitute. Let’s beware that Ramadhan is the month of fasting and devotion to the Almighty and not meant to be for adventurous cooking and eating.


When it comes to fasting, cutting back on unnecessary talk is crucial. Because, as you restrain from food and drinks and try to sanctify yourself for the sake of the Almighty and to recover you inner beauty, the tongue can go out of hand and spoil everything, effectively turning your fast into a simple hunger strike.


A fasting person should be slower to speak and exercise wisdom. Don’t let that lack of judgment and wisdom put you off and deprive you from earning the blessings of fasting.


The tongue puts us in trouble and sometimes acts against ourselves. Not just with how we testify, but also through gossip, negative confessions, anger expression, backbiting, lies and what have you.


We must learn how to guard it. Knowing how to shut our lips on certain occasions or at certain times is considered as a high quality of understanding.


Fasting during Ramadhan should be complemented by prayers and reading the Holy Quran, not by watching TV programmes or engaging in sports activities. Ramadhan is about slowing down and receding from the external world to focus on self-reformation and spiritual cleansing. The month of fasting requires that several adjustments to the normal routine life be made.


Ramadhan is a celebration of God’s guidance to humanity. We should be in a position to transform ourselves into agents of positive moral and social deeds. The significance of fasting is not just abstaining from food and drinks but also a process through which one attains divinity by purification of body, mind and soul.


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