Allah says in the Qur’an:” O you who believe! Fasting is prescribed to you as it was prescribed to those before you, that you may (learn) self-restraint.” (Al-Baqarah:183)
The holy month of Ramadhan is a blessed month. Muslims all over the world should welcome the arrival of Ramadhan with cheer and happiness for it carries blessings, forgiveness and mercy.
Fasting is observed for one month every year. During this fast man abstains from food and water from sunrise to sunset in obedience to the command of Allah.
This act is performed in order to reduce man’s materialism and increase his spirituality, so that he may be able to lead a truly spiritual life in this world. In the process, he spends more time in the worship of Allah.
Fasting awakens in man the feeling of gratefulness. The temporary deprivation of food and water stresses for him the importance of these things as divine blessings.Then when he partakes of food and water after having experienced hunger and thirst, he can feel how truly precious is the food and water provided to him abundantly by Allah. This experience increases manifold his feelings of gratitude to Allah.
Fasting produces moral discipline within man. By restricting the basic things he desires, the devotee is trained to lead a life of self-restraint and not of permissiveness.
By having a curb put on his various desires for one month at a time man is trained to lead a life of self-restraint for the whole year, making no attempt to exceed the limits set by Allah.
What man does by fasting is engage himself more and more in the remembrance and worship of Allah, and in the recitation of the Qur’an. Thus fasting serves as a strategy to increase the efficacy of worship. In this way Allah accepts our worship in its heightened form.
Fasting is, in short, a training course. Its purpose is to place man on a special spiritual plane for one month so that he may be better able to lead the life of a true devotee of Allah and a true lover of humanity.
May Allah (S.W.T.) accept our fasting and all of our good deeds, amin.
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