Let's understand our Muslim friends during this beautiful month of Ramadan. ❤️💯🌈
Dear Non-Muslim friends, Muslims around the world are only days away from the most beautiful month of the year for us: Ramadan.
And for those of you curious about why we fast for such long hours during this month of the (lunar) calendar year, here’s a little briefing:
1. Our fasts are from sunrise to sunset; that’ll be 15 hours every day for 30 days without food or water.
2. This teaches us numerous things such as:
2a. self-control - if you can control your natural human desire for food, you can control just about any temptation
2b. gratitude - understanding how grateful we truly are to have food on our tables every day and realizing what less privileged people face every day
2c. and prioritizing - focusing on our spiritual needs rather than our physical needs
3. Ramadan is a month of changing habits. By shifting our eat and sleep cycles, we put our bodies in a condition of accepting change, which makes this time the absolute best in the year to create good habits, and destroy the bad ones.
4. It is not dangerous. Our bodies are not starved. The human body actually doesn’t release starvation signals until well over 24 hours without food or water.
5. In fact, it is the most natural method of detox and cleanses our physical system of all of the toxins we shove into it throughout the year. 30 days of such a detox is sufficient for ‘cleaning’ our digestive system.
6. Ramadan is the month in our lunar calendar in which our Holy Book, the Qur'an, was gifted to us by the mercy of God. It is a book that teaches us about moral character and one we are encouraged to read frequently, ponder upon, and even memorize so we can constantly be in the remembrance of God - including His greatness and everything He has blessed us with due to His own might, and so that we may improve ourselves as human beings.
7. It is a time when all Muslims feel incredibly connected to one another - like a large family spread across the globe - as we face the same struggle together every day. We encourage each other, we push each other to improve, we await dinner together and share our meals. It is the most exciting time of the year for us.
8. It is a time when doing good and refraining from doing evil has been facilitated since we believe God has chained Satan away from being able to influence us negatively during this month. This is also a means to show us that if we do commit any evil this month, it is due to our own habits we have nurtured rather than Satan’s influence. It allows us to acknowledge our weaknesses and areas needing improvement, and God has made this month easier for us to improve by chaining Satan away.
