Ramadan challenges Christians

WITH the appearance of the new crescent moon last Thursday, the holy month of Ramadan commenced for the Muslim world. During this month, Muslims recall the first time the one God dictated verses of the Holy Qur’an through the Angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammed. His mission would be to call people to obedience to the one God and to righteousness. Ramadan is thus a holy month marked by rigorous fasting; from dawn to dusk, Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, and even sexual activities. Fasting at Ramadan is a serious obligation for the Muslim. It is not easy. The pre-dawn breakfast, the Suhoor, is taken around 4 a.m. No matter how generous this may be, hunger pangs are real by noon, stomach grumbling by afternoon. Persevering to Iftar, the evening meal that breaks the day’s fast, is challenging – especially when one must fast in a school or workplace surrounded by people where non-stop eating has become part of the culture. After Iftar, the Tarawih prayers. In the course of Ramadan, the entire Qur’an is read at Tarawih.

Christians may be reminded of the 40 days of Lent, during which the 40 days of Jesus’ fasting in the desert is commemorated. In my youth, fasting was a requirement for adults during Lent. It meant not eating more than one meal a day, i.e., being permitted to eat one meal and cumulatively just shy of another. But drinking anything liquid did not break the Lenten fast; a soft drink did not break the fast, not a milkshake, not even a mug of beer. In Germany, the best dark beers were developed and brewed for the season of Lent; strong beers sustained the robust worker in the field, as they now enhance the sedentary worker’s beer belly. Today, even this gentle form of fasting has yielded to the junk food, the fast food, the family feasts and the culinary extravaganzas that leave little room in a modern world for the oddity of fasting.