Ramadan Kareem! I've been busy getting ready to go back to school again, but now it's Ramadan, a time for reflection, so I'm back. A lot of people ask me to explain the point of Ramadan. I just looked up the interpretation of a dream I had while oversleeping this morning and I think it about sums up what Ramadan means:
Me: Why am I dreaming of potato chips?
Internet: "To see or eat potato chips in your dream symbolizes your overindulgent behavior."
Me: And waking up convinced I'm thirsty when it's Ramadan and I can't drink water?
Internet: "To dream that you are thirsty symbolizes an unmet need. There is an emotional void in your life. Or you may be seeking inspiration, motivation or just an extra push."
That dream was probably also a reflection of this train of thought I had last night at the iftar party: "Ahhh this biryani is soooo good! I want to eat more! Am I still hungry? No, I'm not hungry but it isssss Ramadan and it's okay if I overeat because I won't be able to eat all day tomorrow or the next day or the next day...."
A lot of people use food to fill emotional needs. A desire to over-indulge in food is probably a sign of or even just direct emotional over-indulgence, making up for something you lack or comforting something that hurts superfluously rather than working to make yourself stronger or heal yourself. Because issues with food often indicate issues with control, the desire to indulge and comfort yourself probably comes out of feeling like you don't have enough control to make the necessary changes in your life. Sometimes people overindulge because they are out of touch with themselves and don't know their actual need. A lot of over-eating is caused by dehydration: by your body telling you it needs water, you being so out of touch with yourself that you don't realize you're thirsty and mistake it for a craving you can't satisfy when a glass of water would've done the trick.
It's not bad to indulge once in awhile but doing it for the wrong reasons will makes things worse. It becomes an emotional crutch. It's not a class A addiction, necessarily, but you may be headed in that direction. Some people may also it to another level, upon realizing their eating habits are control related, by trying to take back that control by starving themselves or making themselves throw up.
I appreciate having a month dedicated to emotional discipline scheduled yearly into my life. To gain power over even yourself, you have to become attuned with
yourself, to know and trust yourself enough to peacefully submit to your
needs rather than drown them out with a power trip of indulgence. Fasting helps you clear your head of the quick fix, instant gratification approach to life that's so easy to fall into and challenges you to address your deeper needs. It is a call to improve yourself, to change something in your life for the better.
If you fall back into your old ways at the end of Ramadan, just that you completed one fast means you challenged your amount of self-control, won, and came away that much stronger. After a month, you'll hopefully come away with realizations about yourself you can focus on and improve upon or you really like the way one change you made during Ramadan worked in your life and that's definitely enough to call it a success.
If you're a non-Muslim friend or you aren't much interested in Islam, religion, psychology or philosophy, what I've said so far is the basic explanation I have for the month of fasting. If you're interested in a more in-depth explanation, please continue reading.
A lot of people say that the discomfort of being hungry, the pain of absence reminds them to be God conscious. That works for some people, with the explanation that in trying times, you should turn to God because God is the source of all strength and all power. I don't think this is wrong but I am wary of associating God only with pain. Besides, in that line of thinking, it would make sense to deprive yourself an unhealthy amount, believing this would make you even more God conscious. But being unhealthy is forbidden by God because it is too great a challenge for the faith of any believer but the practiced, highly disciplined ascetic/Sufi.
The way I see it, not eating during the hours of light, the hours of awakeness/awareness, is a call to figure out your real needs. You relinquish your option to cloud your sense of fulfillment with physical satisfaction. Doing this for a religious reason, you relinquish that choice/freedom/control to God. Well, you remind yourself that you were given that option by God in the first place by giving it up. By giving it up, you check yourself and make sure you aren't abusing this simple power, because an abuse of power is the classical sign of a failing struggle for more power. By giving it up, paradoxically, you gain control because you gain God's favor and God's favor is expressed with an endowment of power. It may not be the power you want, necessarily. But you have learned to trust, because when you give up your control to someone, it's an act of trust, and you'll have to trust that the power you are given is, if not what you want, what you need.
Fasting is also a lesson in the nature of power, that you must first give it up and gain trust, which is demonstrated through nearly every facet of the Prophet Muhammad's life, whose trademark (or trade name...in his time merchants gained reputation through the names they were given in their trade) was Al-Amin, the trustworthy.
What I'm saying is, if you're like me and you're dreaming of potato chips at the beginning of Ramadan and waking up in a panic thinking you're thirsty, this might be a sign of the path that can take you far in right direction, because you have a long way to go. Let the adventure begin!
Let me preface this by saying that I appreciate your thoughts and am possibly missing nuances in your post.
ReplyDeleteNow, I was all set to write a furious rebuttal to it but what saved me from doing it was this line: "Doing this for a religious reason, you relinquish that choice/freedom/control to God." That is what's central about anything religious to me, be it wearing the hijab or fasting or praying five times a day - all these 'impositions' that Muslims are constantly trying to explain to non-Muslims, or even to other Muslims or themselves. If we do it, we do it because we believe in God and He told us to. That is what religion is.
Figuring out the intellectual/scientific/societal/psychological reasons or rationalizing the deeds themselves (as in, finding the inherent 'good'ness of the deeds or their performing in themselves, not because they are God's commandments) comes after the admission that you do it primarily because you were required to, and you submit to that requirement. And to be perfectly honest, the additional reasons seem like a bit of a conceit to me. Like we're saying, 'if the deeds themselves cannot be proven to have inherent goodness, maybe they're not worth doing... in spite of what God said.' Forgive me if I sound a little irritated by the need to defend my religious choices to anyone else.
So as I said in the beginning, I don't think this view is opposed to yours up there, but it's just a kind of rant I've been wanting to have for a while now in response to people who are of the opinion that women should wear the hijab as a political or social statement rather than as a result of their relationship with God.
I really appreciate this comment. We're agreed on our central motivations behind religious action. Also, I admire your irritation at having to defend your religious choices. I'm going to reflect on this further and dedicate my next blogpost to addressing what you've brought up.
DeleteBy the way, what do you mean when you say, "as a result of their relationship with God"? Just curious what that means to you.
I recently had an online conversation with my father about wearing the hijab based on this op-ed in the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/opinion/the-freedom-of-the-hijab.html?_r=1&src=recg
DeleteI shared it on facebook with this comment: "Interesting to see this on the NYTimes Op-Ed page. It's ridiculous though how the hijab and anti-hijab camps are so ridiculously at the extreme ends of the debate. As if there can be no middle. I agree with, "I know many would agree with me when I say that the hijab is basically an expression of spirituality and a personal bond with one’s creator" from the article though."
His comment was: "See how the hijab is a truely (sic) liberating experience."
And my reaction to that was... no, it isn't when you are discriminated against, ridiculed, or called on to defend your choice by almost everyone you have a passing relationship with. It can be as constraining as liberating. So when people go on about it being either hell for the wearer or absolute heaven, I don't agree with that. You cannot just label it one or the other. And we had a little back and forth over it.
I was a little taken aback by the writer saying she wears the hijab to liberate herself as the main point of the article. I didn't think that's the primary reason why you should be wearing it. And here was a whole article that, except for a line, went on about liberation. The champions of hijab mostly write about reasons like... it will hide you from the gazes of men, or your modesty rests in it, or that it liberates you and such. It's equating the hijab to a sack. I can easily counter each of those reasons. What I cannot argue against is the fact that it's what Allah asked me to do.
Apart from that, it's like thinking of the hijab in the frame of your interaction with other people, not Allah (or in addition to Allah). And that's kind of walking along the thin edge of ascribing partners to Allah or someone being more important than God -- pretty much the definition of shirk. I realize I'm going a little overboard here but I know some people to whom this applies, definitely not the majority of Muslims I come into contact though. There are those who choose hijab as a fashion statement or as a way to appease their family or to appear holier-than-thou. If that is what guides someone, how is that a religious action?
So when I say that I do something religious as result of my relationship with God, in the purest sense of the practice of religion, I should do it because I believe in it bringing me closer to my faith and Allah. It is for me and by me. No one else is considered in my decision. All the other reasons, if any, are additional. The primary one is between me and my God. Which is my problem with a lot of organized religion and community centers pressurizing people into an overt show of their faith or wagging fingers and hounding people for not being 'good' Muslims... but that is another beast entirely.
Now, I agree as you pointed out in the follow up post that for some people the other reasons are what start them off or what they need to strengthen their faith, etc. But when all, if not most of the discourse in popular media seems to rest on rationalizing, it loses a bit of its religious aspect. I want people to say I do it because I'm a Muslim and it's part of my belief. And then, see... here are other reasons I feel it's good. But sadly most of it is political now.
Finally, as I said in my earlier post, I appreciate your thoughts. They are in most ways extremely similar to mine and I have a similar background too. This comment or the one before it is in no way pointing fingers at you personally, just something that needed to get off my chest and this is just the place where it happened. :)
I hope you don't think I am offended by your comments. I truly am grateful and am very happy to hear that you get something out of my musings and ramblings. =)
DeleteI read that article, too. It's interesting that the line you quoted is her only reference to God and despite the fact that she says she has chosen hijab as way of claiming herself, she doesn't refer to God without prefacing it with, "I know many would agree with me," as something that has approval in larger society and even uses the third person possessive "one's" instead of 'my.'
I think she does it is the same as the reason people rationalize religion so much. Religion is highly looked down upon in "western" society. Turning away from religion feels required in order to be taken seriously. Admitting that you are doing something just because God said you should makes you vulnerable. For most people it's difficult to deal with feeling like it's a choice between society or God. I am grateful for the people who try to make more acceptance for religion in society, as stilted as their efforts may sometimes seem.