Christians and Fasting during Ramadan

As Christians, I believe that we should only fast during Christian holy days or when in a deep spiritual state. This is to get closer to the Lord, and I believe it is good for Christians to do. However, let's remember that we are Christian and not Muslim. Therefore, although we can respect their holy days, we should not be participating in them.

In his desire to emphasize Christian fasting as distinct from/as over against (“fundamentally different from”) Muslim fasting, I think McDermott has quite overstated the matter to the point of missing a spiritual discipline that can serve as substantial common ground. For an interesting piece on shared physical/spiritual themes related to fasting, I would recommend the link above.

If my Islamic understanding is half-way correct, Muhammad was influenced in part by Christian mystics and sects in Arabia during his time, which, in some measure, could be said to account for the explicit emphases of prayer and fasting in Islam. This element of historical context is very significant, I think, when it comes to seeing the spiritual discipline of fasting as a possible area of common ground between our faiths. Not to mention, as Mateen Elass said above, seeing Ramadan fasting as an opportunity for Christian-Muslim friendship. Not to mention, as a commenter noted, seeing Ramadan fasting as an opportunity for Christian witness.

Also, importantly, I think we Christians need to be careful of a flat, linear approach to our supposed “understanding” of law and obedience in Islam. (I have many Muslim friends, including imams, who have challenged and encouraged me in this area.) So, though fasting during Ramadan is a command from God in the Islamic perspective, it has been suggested to me that Muhammad would be greatly dismayed to the extent that the Muslim community (or Christian community) misses the spirituality behind the law, misses the spirit and forest for the laws and trees.

With regard to a Christian fasting within Ramadan, again I think McDermott is missing something. As is Al Mohler, who responded to Brian McLaren’s Ramadan fasting this year by saying: “It's by following these practices that a Muslim demonstrates his obedience to the rule of the law through the Quran. For a Christian to do the same automatically implies a submission to the same rule. And beyond that, it's an explicit affirmation that this is a good and holy thing. From a New Testament perspective, it is not a good and holy thing.”

A Christian’s full participation in the practice of Ramadan fasting no more implies submission to the same rule (in the same way) than reading the Qur’an implies submission to that text’s ultimate authority (in the same way as Muslims) or that text’s implications for our understanding of the nature of God and how we approach and interact with him (in the same way as Muslims).

But what Mohler and others are essentially forgetting, I think, and what McDermott is missing, is how the presence of Jesus within the Christian fundamentally changes a Christian’s engagement and participation in another’s religious practice or cultural custom, for that matter. Here, I'm trying to channel the gospel-and-culture interaction principle taught by both Jesus and Paul, in the form of a question: What do we accept, what do we reject, and what do we transform – like Jesus himself? With the emphasis, in this particular case, on transforming Ramadan fasting.

Anyway, perhaps we could view Ramadan fasting as a potential Jerusalem Council-esqe extension – only in reverse, from Islam back to and through Jesus. The same New Testament questions and principles get applied. And here, mission workers in Islamic nations and communities – not to mention Jesus-followers from a Muslim background like Mateen – certainly have much insight to offer us Western Christians about how to think and to do understanding, relations and witness among Muslims.