Spirituality: September 2007 Archives

There is a communal and public aspect of Ramadan that helps to bind Muslims as a community (ummah in Arabic), and there are the logistics of fasting that help us balance our daily responsibilities around the commitment to fast. But the act of fasting is, at its heart, a very personal spiritual experience--a contract between ourselves and our Creator that helps to reestablish our place with respect to Him.

Fasting serves the mental purpose of taming our ego, the physical purpose of putting mind over body, and the spiritual purpose of submitting ourselves to God's will.

It is human nature to empower and elevate ourselves. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when left unchecked, it can become an addiction that upsets the critical balance between people that is needed for a civil society. Muslims, like all humans, are no exception to this instinct. Left to our own devices, we would worship only ourselves and resist any attempt to put rules and restrictions on our behavior. But there is an inner voice or state--Muslims refer to it as our fitra--that recalls a primordial covenant with God to recognize His authority over all things. It is this basic relationship between human and divine that Ramadan seeks to reestablish.