Website: www.aaiil.uk
Fasting before
Islam
Friday
Khutba by Dr Zahid Aziz,
for Lahore
Ahmadiyya UK, 21 March 2025
“O you who believe, fasting is
prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you, so that
you may guard against evil.” — ch. 2, Al-Baqarah, v. 183 |
یٰۤاَیُّہَا
الَّذِیۡنَ
اٰمَنُوۡا
کُتِبَ
عَلَیۡکُمُ
الصِّیَامُ
کَمَا
کُتِبَ عَلَی
الَّذِیۡنَ
مِنۡ
قَبۡلِکُمۡ
لَعَلَّکُمۡ
تَتَّقُوۡنَ
﴿۱۸۳﴾ۙ |
I would like to turn back to this
first verse of the Holy Quran about fasting and refer to a particular aspect of
what it says. It tells us that fasting was a spiritual practice to be found in
all religions before Islam. Not only in the established religions, but it is
reported in Bukhari that the Quraish, from pre-Islamic times, used to keep a
fast on the 10th of Muharram (hadith 1893), and the Holy Prophet too fasted on
that day before fasting in Ramadan was ordained. The Quraish probably took that
practice from the Jews. When the Holy Prophet came to Madinah he asked the Jews
why they fasted on that day and they replied that it was an auspicious day for
them as it was the anniversary of the day God liberated them from the Pharaoh,
and Moses had fasted on that day. The Holy Prophet replied:
“We have more right to commemorate Moses than you.”
So he ordered Muslims to fast on that
day as well (hadith 2004). But after fasting in Ramadan was prescribed, the
Holy Prophet gave up fasting on that day and said that Muslims could fast on
that day if they wished, or not fast if they wished (hadith 1893, and
2000–2002).
In fact, Moses, Jesus, and Buddha, who
were among the greatest Founders of faiths, practised quite rigorous fasting as
a preliminary to attaining their first experience of spiritual enlightenment
and communion with God. The Holy Prophet himself, before his appointment as
Messenger of God, undertook rigorous devotions in the cave of Hira every year
in the month of Ramadan. According to the Holy Prophet’s biography by Muhammad
Husayn Haykal:
“In that cave Muhammad used to spend the whole
month of Ramadan. He would satisfy himself with the least provisions, carried
to him from time to time by a servant, while devoting himself uninterruptedly to
his spiritual pursuits in peace, solitude and tranquillity. His devotion often
caused him to forget himself, to forget his food, and, indeed, to forget
the whole world around him. … Whenever the year revolved and the month of
Ramadan arrived, Muhammad would return to the cave of Hira for meditation … In his
retreat he prayed day and night and fasted long periods.” (The Life
of Muhammad, Third Edition, English translation, 1983: see p. 70, 72 and
73. The bolding here is ours.)
About Moses we read in the Bible that
he told his followers:
“When I went up into the mountain to receive the
tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant which the Lord made with you,
then I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread
nor drank water” (Deuteronomy, 9:9).
Similarly, about Jesus, who appeared
about fourteen centuries after Moses, it is written in the Gospel of Matthew
that he “fasted forty days and forty nights” (4:2) before beginning his
ministry, and he explained the purpose of fasting by quoting from the scripture
of Moses as follows:
“It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’.” (Matthew, 4:4)
This indicates that the Word of God
gives a human being another kind of life, besides his physical life which
relies on food like bread. That is the life we seek through fasting.
Apart from the very rigorous fasting
by Founders of religions, there was also fasting by ordinary people before
Islam. The purpose of fasting was self-purification, as mentioned in the Quran in
the verse I quoted above. There was a prophet Jonah (Yunus) who was
commanded by God to tell the people of the city of Nineveh that they would be
destroyed in forty days for their sins. Their story in the Bible says:
“The people of Nineveh believed God’s warning. So they
decided not to eat any food for a while. And all of them put on the rough
clothing people wear when they are sad. That is what everyone did, from the
least important of them to the most important.” (Jonah, 3:5)
The king himself did the same:
“Jonah’s
warning reached the king of Nineveh. He got up from his throne. He took off his
royal robes. He also dressed himself in the clothing of sadness. And
then he sat down in the dust.” (Jonah, 3:6)
He issued the same instructions to
his people:
“People and animals must not eat or drink anything.
Let people and animals alike be covered with the clothing of sadness. All of
you must call out to God with all your hearts. Stop doing what is evil. Don’t
harm others. Who knows? God might take pity on us. He might not be angry with
us anymore.” (Jonah, 3:7–9)
As can be seen here, this fasting was
meant so that people may “stop doing what is evil and don’t harm others” and
God would have mercy on them. However, in world religious history the wrong
idea developed that if you inflict suffering on yourself by fasting, God would
feel sorry for you and avert His punishment from you. So when some disaster
came upon people, because it was considered as a punishment, people would fast
as a way of showing God their self-inflicted pain and their mourning, believing
that God would then feel sorry for them and remove their troubles.
Islam
rejected entirely the idea that people, in order to avert God’s anger
and get His compassion, should inflict some voluntary suffering or punishment
on themselves. Instead of this wrong idea, Islam introduced regular fasting in
a fixed month, regardless of whether people were facing some trouble or not at
that time. So, fasting is not a way of averting God’s punishment on particular
occasions of disaster, whether such disaster has come due to people’s sins or
not, but it is a regular practice for the development of the inner human
faculties.
In
times of distress, Muslims do have recourse to fasting outside Ramadan. But
fasting helps not because God sees people suffering due to fasting and
takes pity on them. It is because through fasting they improve their moral
behaviour, turn away from selfishness and turn towards helping others. Because
of this, they gain God’s mercy and favour.
In
the teachings of the earlier prophets, we can read about the true significance
of fasting as taught by Islam. Jesus gave his followers these instructions in
his famous Sermon on the Mount:
“Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the
hypocrites, with a sad appearance (i.e., looking in distress). For they
disfigure their faces that they may appear to people to be fasting… But you,
when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear
to people to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place; and
your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.” (Matthew, 6:16–18).
There is a good lesson in this for
Muslims also. What Jesus has said in the words beginning “but to your Father
who is in the secret place …”, is the same as what the Holy Prophet Muhammad
told Muslims. The Holy Prophet told them that God says about the person who is
fasting:
“He refrains from food and drink and
lustful desires to seek My pleasure: fasting is for Me only and I will grant its reward; and a virtue brings reward ten times
like it.” (Bukhari, hadith 1894)
There
was a prophet of the Bible called Isaiah, between the times of Moses and Jesus.
His people, i.e. the Israelites or the Jews, complained to him that God had not
seen or noticed that they had been fasting, and had not removed their troubles.
God gave Isaiah the answer to their complaint, and it was this:
“Look, at the
same time you fast, you satisfy your selfish desires, you oppress your workers.
Look, your fasting is accompanied by arguments, brawls, and fistfights. Do not
fast as you do today, if you are trying to make your voice heard in heaven. Is
this really the kind of fasting I want? Do I want a day when people merely
humble themselves, bowing their heads like a reed and stretching out on
sackcloth and ashes? Is this really what you call a fast, a day that is
pleasing to the Lord?
No, this is
the kind of fast I want. I want you to remove the sinful chains, to tear away
the ropes of the burdensome yoke, to set free the oppressed, and to break every
burdensome yoke. I want you to share your food with the hungry and to provide
shelter for homeless, oppressed people. When you see someone naked, clothe him!
Don’t turn your back on your own flesh and blood! Then your light will shine
like the sunrise; your restoration will quickly arrive; your godly behaviour
will go before you, and the Lord’s splendour will be your rear guard. Then you
will call out, and the Lord will respond; you will cry out, and he will reply,
‘Here I am.’ You must remove the burdensome yoke from among you and stop
pointing fingers and speaking sinfully. You must actively help the hungry and
feed the oppressed. Then your light will dispel the darkness, and your darkness
will be transformed into noonday.” (Isaiah, 58:3–10)
This, then, is the kind of fasting
that prophets of Allah taught, and of course the same kind of fasting is
required by Islam, as is clearly stated in the Quran and as shown by the Holy
Prophet Muhammad by his example. May Allah enable us all to fast with these
thoughts uppermost in our minds, Ameen.
I may add here that the well-known
prayer from the Quran, “Our Lord, grant us good in this world and good in the
Hereafter, and save us from the punishment of the Fire” (2:201), in a way
relates to fasting. The “good in this world” is the physical side of fasting,
that we be granted to complete the fasts fulfilling the outward rules relating
to them. The “good in the Hereafter” is that we attain the underlying moral and
spiritual aims of fasting, which last long beyond the physical fast.
Website: www.aaiil.uk