Open Discussions/ Gulf Cultural Club
Fasting to enrich the soul in an empty world
Dr Rebecca Masterton*
Father Laurence Hillel **
Ausaf Farooqi***
[youtube youtubeurl=”0jBNMnIlG-I”
Fasting is a declaration of intention to dissociate from the material world and ascend towards the divine, the absolute and the perfect. While the body may complain of hunger the soul is enriched by prayers, contemplation and meditation. It is a journey that ignores the constraints of time and space and transcends the borders of the human body to join with the eternal power of God. It is a cleansing process much needed in today’s world that approaches the ultimate limits of materialism, consumerism and earthly attractions. While for Muslims the holy month of Ramadan provides the opportunity for this spiritual ascendance and the cleansing of the inner soul other faiths are also familiar with fasting. How does Christianity approach fasting? And how can the collective power of faiths can be channelled to ensure this self-cleansing, soul-searching and self-realisation?
6th June, 2017
Chairman Shabbir Rizwi: For Muslims the holy month of Ramadan provides the opportunity for this spiritual ascendance and the cleansing of the inner soul other faiths are also familiar with fasting. How does Christianity approach fasting and how does the collective power of faith be channelled to ensure that this self cleansing, soul searching and self realisation come and share this experience with us during this month of Ramadan.
I am very pleased and delighted that you were able to make it on this day of summer, which does not feel like summer at all outside. I am sure that those of us who are 
fasting are feeling even colder but I am sure that the talk is going to be very warm and our presenters will make us all feel jolly good at the end and we will be ready for our meal of iftar.
Father Laurence Hillel: Our topic today is food and fasting within the Christian tradition. I think it is important to speak about both because both food and fasting in the Christian tradition have important spiritual overtones, and at the same time there is a distinct difference I would suggest between Christian, Jewish and Islamic approaches.
Let me focus first on fasting and to alert our listeners to the fact that there are different Christian attitudes to fasting between Christian denominations, and this is for theological reasons. Whereas some will feel comfortable with the idea that fasting is “spiritual discipline” and gives access to God’s grace, others will feel uncomfortable with the idea of fasting for spiritual reasons because it implies you are trying to do something to bring a spiritual benefit. This distracts from the protestant belief that ultimately we are dependent on the benefit of God’s graciousness and forgiveness, which human beings have access to as a consequence of Jesus’ death on the cross. 
In this year which is the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the protestant reformation, it is worth noting that Martin Luther and other reformers were very critical of the Roman Catholic churches rules on fasting because they regarded those rules as giving the impression that ultimately a human being could earn their salvation, rather than rely purely on the mercy of God.
But with that proviso it is true that for the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox churches, fasting was, in times past, very much part of expectation laid on a Christian, and there were strict rules relating to fasting.
This of course was inherited from Jewish practice. The only example of Jesus fasting is when after he was bapt
ized he went into the wilderness and fasted for forty days and forty nights. Fasting was not central to his ministry, although he spoke as if it was an assumption that his disciples would fast (matthew 6, “and whenever you fast do not look dismal, like the hypocrites). Jesus focus (as it had been for some of the Jewish prophets) was on the spiritual integrity of the act. But for Jesus neither fasting nor the food laws were central to his understanding of what it meant to follow God’s way, and I will come back to this later.
Fasting did however become a practice of the early church with Wednesday and Friday’s being mentioned as fast days. The legacy of this is seen in the practice in the Roman Catholic church of regarding Friday as a special day which meant not eating meat on that day, but rather fish.
Following Jesus’ example of 40 days fasting in the wilderness, in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox tradition the period of lent was regarded as a period of fasting. For some this would mean an ascetic diet during this period (no meat, no luxurious foods, for some a very strict non-dairy diet). Until relatively recently fasting was understood as having one main meal and two light meals each day during this period of Lent. Two strict fast days were Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Even today many Christians will not eat at all on these days. But more common during Lent was and is the idea of abstaining from a luxury, ie chocolate, biscuits, alcohol)
It was also expected that if you wanted to receive communion at Mass you would fast for several hours beforehand.
Fasting during Lent was seen, alongside self-reflection and charity, as a means of acknowledging one’s reliance on God, and of cleansing (purifying) oneself of those things which hindered the relationship with God and each other, in other words of acknowledging one’s sinfulness.
Fasting is even more important within the Orthodox tradition. Aside from Lent, Advent and a period after Pentecost were also important.
Fasting from Fasting Fr. Anastasios Gounaris
The start of Great Lent—and the Great Forty-Day Fast (Megali Tessarakosti in Greek) —means that, among other spiritual disciplines of Lent, many Orthodox Christians will be busily trying to meet the Church’s fasting rules and traditions. Put simply, to fast in the Orthodox way during Great Lent one basically becomes a vegetarian: no meats, no animal products. Stricter fasting days within Lent (the weekdays of Lent) additionally restrict olive oil and wine (staples of the Mediterranean diet), and “looser” days (Annunciation, Palm Sunday) allow fish. Monks will be more rigorous in their following of an ascetic diet. Fasting is considered part of a group of spiritual disciplines that, in the original Greek, all come under the heading of askesis (pronounced AHSS-key-cease). These spiritual disciplines also include 
prayer, mortification of the passions, practicing humility, almsgiving, controlling the tongue, and others that most think of as being observed in their purest form only by monastics.
One of the reasons for criticism of the fasting rules by Protestants at the time of the reformation is the belief that religion becomes a duty as opposed to spiritually uplifting. Fasting can be taken up in a rather begrudging, parsimonious manner; causing misery not just to the person, but to the people around them. But this is not true fasting is about. Fasting is meant to help one focus on what is important, namely one’s relationship with God. And in a context of plenty it is also aimed at making one more aware of those who have little. Christians may be inspired by the writing of the Jewish prophets of the Old Testament.
Book of Isaiah, chapter 58:6–7.
“Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”
That is why many modern Christians link fasting with prayer and giving to charity. The idea of a Friday Fast day where the proceeds are given to charity such as Christian Aid or Oxfam has become popular. Also fasting may be seen as not just about food, but about all material things. We might have much which we do not need in our houses and lives, and a period of fasting is more about letting go of these things (ie computers, mobile phones, Television) so as to give ourselves more time to be in communication with God (and each other!)
But I wish to return to the first part of the theme, namely food. For Christians do see food as an important part of their spiritual lives. They do not have the same regulations about prohibited foods as exist in Judaism and Islam. Indeed there was a major dispute in the early church about whether Christians needed to abide by Jewish food rules with the decision not, as well as consideration over whether it mattered if one ate food offered to the Roman Gods; in this case the Apostle Paul’s guidance was that it did not matter unless it caused newer members to be distracted from their faith; what mattered most were not the external practices, but the integrity of one’s heart (we go back to Jesus’ teaching about fasting and almsgiving)
But what is important for Christians is that the “feast” became a sign of God’s graciousness; Jesus told stories about kings giving feast to whom all who were the poorest came, the feast as a sign of God’s abundant generosity and of promise. And the Eucharistic feast lies at the heart of Christian worship, where Christians share blessed bread and wine as a sacramental sign of God’s love as revealed by Jesus’ death on the Cross; the bread and wine signing Jesus’ body and blood. Christians remember more the meals Jesus shared with his disciples and followers, rather than any fasting he followed. In particular aside from the parables about the feasts he told (Other famous one’s include The Marriage Feast of Cana and the parable of the lost or prodigal Son), there is the Last Supper Jesus shared with his disciples when he gave a summary of his teaching “Love one another as I have loved You”. Eating together was for Jesus a sign of friendship, community, hospitality, thanksgiving and commitment, and in that sense we might argue the Big Ifthar is an action in that mode.
Chairman: Thank you very much. Certainly the end of fasting is a feasting occasion without doubt but to take our thought of turning water magically into wine, perhaps our Prime Minister needs to find that magic money tree by some inspiration to turn water into wine.
You quite rightly pointed out the need for humility and to lose the bonds of wickedness and not be grumpy. I was in Dubai last week. The extraordinary thing is that if you stay in a hotel you get a list of 20 things you should not do: do not smoke, do not drink water etc People may get upset and the police may come and take you by the collar. So they are trying to implement religion by force while 50 percent of the population living in the UAE are non Muslims who need to eat and to drink water.
So what you see is the extraordinary thing that Cafe Nero have curtains outside. You can go through the curtain and fill yourself as much as you like. I don’t know if that is hypocritical or trying to be gentile towards the people who are fasting.
I find it really extraordinary that one needs to make such rules and regulations and curtain the area off if you are fasting. Perhaps the other test could be of temptation – that one should not be tempted to break that fast irrespective of what people are doing there. So to molly coddle people behind curtains so they can eat is perhaps not the right thing.
Father Hillel: That is the point. Fasting can become like a regulation and very negative. It is as if you are forcing people against their will to do something and it is not really what it should be about which is a spiritual discipline.
Chairman: Also in Islam there are so many exclusions. Pregnant women can’t fast, breast feeding women can’t fast, someone who is ill is not permitted to fast and neither is someone who is travelling. I was travelling for five days so I was not permitted to fast either so I was in stuffing my face behind the curtains.
Ausaf Farooqi: Bismallah. When I was asked to come and speak I did not know what to expect. Dr Saeed has been my friend for more than 45 years. We spent many misspent youthful afternoons and evenings in the 70s together. I did really know what to expect. I am not really a speaker as such. I was asked to reflect on the month of Ramadan. I will try to describe my personal experience and how I see Ramadan.
The month of Ramadan for Muslims is not just about fasting and abstinence from food. It is a lot more than that. It is the month when are celebrating the revelation of the message of Allah and our blessed Prophet in the Holy Quran. That is part of our celebration for the month. Abstinence from food is part of it. It is also the month when we Muslims and me personally take stock and reflect on the past year: where have I got to, what have I achieved, where have I failed? What could be the causes for this? Not just simply to say ‘if only I had done this, if only I had tried something different maybe I would have done better.’
It is a time for contemplation and reflection on the message of Allah. It is the month when we try to connect with our creator, Lord and master and try to understand our existence on this earth for whatever time we have had and how it has been. It is not about looking miserable (I do look miserable most of the time that I am fasting – that is a confession). It is also about reflecting on the sensations that I as an individual feel and how my life’s experiences have crushed me, the good things that happened and the things that have not gone so well.
I could carry on in this line but I feel a very strong urge to reflect on my most recent experiences, particularly within the last ten days or so due to the events which we are seeking around us in Manchester and in London. In the blessed month of Ramadan, I feel the need to reflect inwards and how the message that I see as so pure can invoke something that is so nasty and evil. How can somebody who claims to be Muslim and claims to belong to the same faith as me do these things in my name, in the name of my faith?
I am sorry I do not have answers. These issues have been brought to the fore of my mind and made me think and reflect on a whole range of things. Fasting is about abstinence and refraining from the things that you would normally do. I will share with you an experience I had where I went to a silent retreat for ten days. You actually abstained from speaking for ten days. It was a tough challenge. It was quite awesome. I connected it to fasting and Ramadan.
We were not allowed to say ‘hello’ or ‘good morning’ or greet the people around us. Try and imagine that you are literally alone on this planet even though there are people around you who have also taken the vow of silence.
It was the first time I did it. The sensations were quite frightening. They manifested themselves in extreme physical pain in different parts of my body because when we are talking, like I am talking now, making hand gestures and looking around, we are distracting our mind from where we are and what our ‘ now’ is. We are trying to reflect.
The mind is a very strange part of our body. It spends most of the time thinking about what has already happened. What happened yesterday, what happened last week, last month, last year or for the period of a life time. It spends a lot of time thinking about what may happen tomorrow – planning for the future. Things ahead of us. We spend little time reflecting on our present – on where we are now.
When we reflect on these periods of abstinence – refraining from speech or food or whatever – it brings your focus to where you are now and you start feeling your existence in a lot of ways: your heart beating, the sense of feeling cold or hot. All those things make you focus on where you are at and obviously the lack of food and sugar can make you feel weaker. You replete your energy levels. But if you try and focus on what you are feeling and why you are feeling that , which is something I do every day, it can help you to discover things that you would not discover otherwise. That is my personal experience.
Like that period of silence that I had for ten days. I did not know I could feel pain in parts of the body. During fasting questions come to your mind that would not come to you otherwise because you are distracted or thinking about your next meal or your next activity that you will be getting involved in.
That has been my personal experience. It is extremely uplifting and I come out of it feeling that my batteries have been fully charged because I had a chance to get away from my daily chores and all the stresses that I have. One stress that we have these days is the mobile phone. It is a killer. I keep wondering who is calling me, what am I supposed to do next. You get away from the phone and reflect. I find it hugely uplifting and the month of Ramadan has all the other blessings that come with it: it is the month of giving, the month of sharing, it is the month of celebrating the renovation of the message from Allah and connecting with our history and with our past. It is all of the above.
For me personally it is almost like a retreat and an opportunity to take stock of things and try to understand why I am where I am.
Chairman: Very touching and quite absorbing Brother Ausaf. Certainly it is a month of stock taking and serious contemplation without any doubt because it gives us an opportunity during the hustle and bustle of the 12 months to allocate some time during 30 days to have a difficult conversation with ourselves rather than anyone else. That difficult conversation requires ourselves to be serious about our place in society, our place in the universe and our place as God’s creations on this planet.
Before I go to the next speaker I will take the Chair’s perogative of reciting a poem which I wrote for this month. One of our brothers is smiling because I sent it to him. It is called the Month of Reflection.
MONTH OF REFLECTION
In this city of extreme distraction
In this city of extreme distraction
No moment to reflect in London
Routine is much of our day
It is rare to stop at be at bay
(the sort of thing that both speakers were talking about)
Think what we do and why
Think what we do and why
We just do it to make hay
Good may sometimes come
Oft it leaves us numb
Many a times we miss a chance
And pass by beauty as dance
This mindless haste of our time
This mindless haste of our time
Habits we follow no space for sublime
A month of blessings in abundance
Ramadan the chosen month of opulence
The fountain head of blessing
Made this month for assessing
(what you were referring to earlier brother)
The fountainhead of blessing
Made this month for assessing
To stop contemplate and reflect
To stop contemplate and reflect
So we can reduce our defect
With the dawn of Ramadan
Mercy and bless his reign
All organs of perception and sensation
All organs of perception and sensation
Need to experience the fast of salvation
During this month devils are chained
During this month devils are chained
(this is what is reflected in the Holy Quran and the hadiths of the Prophet)
Cleansing journey or purification is gained.
Stop eating or drinking is only the beginning
Stop eating or drinking is only the beginning
More disciplines are part of winning
The determination of fasting is to make the change lasting
The determination of fasting is to make the change lasting
Just to avoid material intake is wasted
To make the effort of fasting not jaded
Fasting ethics is to change behaviour
Fasting ethics is to change behaviour
To regulate the self to be its saviour
Not to use the tongue for abuse
Lies, back biting or slander may seduce
Protruding eye must refrain from immoral and unethical domain
Joy of fasting is not just a detox
Joy of fasting is not just a detox
Spiritual cleansing is our equinox
Open our hearts to the almighty
And experience total beauty.
Thank you very much.
Dr Rebecca Masterton: In the name of God the Compassionate the Merciful. As we get older we start to reflect back. So I was going to actually go back to when I started to fast in the month of Ramadan which was almost exactly 20 years ago when I was in Egypt for a few months. I experienced the month of Ramadan for the first time around January. I started to fast in the month of Ramadan for about two years before I formally came to Islam.
Having that month in Egypt and observing a whole area, a whole city fasting made a very big impact on me. I was able to see how the timetable in the month of Ramadan regulates peoples’ lives differently and so just before Maghrib and the breaking of the fast the markets are very busy with everybody preparing to get the food and then sometimes me and my friends would invite people as well. So you would go out of the house to meet them and try to help them reach your apartment so they would not get lost. In those moments, around the time of Iftar and the calling of the Adan in Alexandria north all of the streets were absolutely silent and absolutely empty and the trams had stopped. There were maybe one of two taxis around if you were fortunate but if you were late for an iftar and if you wanted to get a taxi is was very difficult.
So the whole city had come to a standstill. The silence was emanating from the houses and you could feel everyone preparing to break their fast. When you broke the fast all the families get together and go out. And then there is a total contrast to the silence. After the fast has been broken then all the families go out. It is very busy and everyone is together until late.
What I think that is the nice thing about the practise of Islam is that we are not dominated by a nine to five schedule. In a Muslim country it is much easier to swap around your timetable. Muslim countries cater for that. It makes you see life in a different way w hen you are up at night and much quieter and reflecting in the daytime. I worked for a TV station and we did programmes at night after Maghreb. So when we were breaking our fast earlier it was getting darker earlier and I think I spent almost the entire month in darkness. When you are awake most of the time at night time you do not see much of the daylight. It is a very strange experience.
Coming into Islam began with this very beautiful experience of the month of Ramadan which I have not quite found so much in London. London is so mixed. The streets do not go completely silent because everyone is just about to break their fast. But it is all part of this cultivation of the higher self.
I am just moving towards what for me lies at the heart of Islam and what this practise of fasting is in relation to that foundation which is a cultivation of the consciousness of the human being. Its about training ourselves to see our existence differently and to perceive reality differently so that we are not deluded by the outer appearance of things.
This is the whole practise of Islam. It is about cultivating detachment from the external appearance of things and generating and cultivating a perception of what lies beyond the outer appearance.
And so these very strict prohibitions that we see with fasting – people do not understand that it is absolutely no drinking, no eating, no looking at what is prohibited, no speaking what is prohibited, no listening to what is prohibited as in bad things immoral things. You just can’t have a sip of water. This absolute enforced bodily detachment is a way cultivating that internal detachment from the world so that we are not dominated by our desires. We come to realise that we are stronger than we thought we were. We are not dependent upon the world to the extent that we believed ourselves to be. A new you, a different you, emerges from this practice of fasting.
You are in a community that is focused upon fasting and dikr frequent remembrance of God, reflection of prayer. It may not sound interesting to many young people but actually what is so interesting about it is that when you are in communities that do that collectively you do start to have a different experience of existence. You have a different experience of reality. You have those distractions removed from you.
Many Muslims say I am not going to watch the usual TV programmes. You are removing these distractions from your senses and coming in touch with internal different senses so that when you go back out into the world you see that world in a different way, in a different light. You may go out into that noisy street where there are distractions, with people shopping and cafes. You see all of that in a more objective, detached mode. That helps you to understand what this humanity is all about. There is a part of us that lies beyond these daily distractions.
Another beautiful thing that I did observe, and still do observer, about the month of Ramadan is this encouragement of brotherhood and sisterhood with each other, and of course with humanity as well. So there is a lot of feeding of the hungry. Last year Muslims in the month of Ramada raised 100,000 million for charity.
It is one of those times of the year where it raises hope in yourself that yes, I can be a better person. I am being reminded of my higher self. I am being given that confidence in my fasting that yes, I can aspire to that higher self.
We have been talking about the rat race and everything and I think it is definitely one of the challenges of fasting in non-Muslim countries. I know that Muslims get a lot less sleep at this time here because of the late nights: having been up late, eating late, gathering together. We sleep at maybe two or three o’clock and then get up for work and then carry on in that other system until five or six in the evening. You are juggling with two worlds, with two schedules, with two ways of being sometimes. It is a great challenge.
I think something to reflect on is that maybe most of us have experienced this at the gatherings for the month of Ramadan we say: ‘ in sha Allah we must see each other very soon, what is your number, let us meet up’ and we don’t meet each other again until the next month of Ramadan. A whole year has gone by and we have not seen each other.
What is happening to the Muslim community? Muslims are not unaffected by modernity. They are affected in the same way as other communities are. We live in a very individualistic society and it is very difficult to make meaningful bonds with people in this society. Islam cultivates meaningful bonds between people. Muslims are also affected by this culture of modernity especially in the big city where everyone is overwhelmed by trying to keep up with their schedule. There is a lot of loneliness starting to emerge in the Muslim community, just as it is in non-Muslim communities.
I was giving a talk a few weeks ago about how we need to think about combating the weakening of the bonds in our community and that really requires pro active action. It requires actually making a sincere intention to contact one or two people or to arrange a gathering and to be much more on the alert to the gradual disintegration of our communities. This is what is actually happening. Communities are starting to disintegrate. We must make an effort to try and see each other outside these particular times of the year.
And something else in relation to the cultivation of spirituality. We see parts of our community who perhaps are not taking sufficient action necessary for correcting some of the problems that are existing in the community. We know that there is corruption, there is disruption in families, there are social and political issues and there isn’t sufficient organisation to tackle these.
What we often find is that members of the community will focus on going to gatherings like this or making the requisite supplications. We all want to reflect in this time during this month upon ourselves and improve upon ourselves. But in truth this is only half of the picture. We need to clean up with our social and political ethics. There needs to be an injection of courage into the community.
I think many of us have experienced his reluctance to speak out. There can be an increased reluctance to speak out because of the political situation that is going on globally where many Muslims are forced into a position of apologising. You go into a position of apologetics for what is going on with regard to these bombings, with regard to the kind of insane things we are seeing happening in our news.
Some people take the quiet route. I will just stay here quietly in a corner and I will go to my majlis and I will do my fasting and as long as I am reading the duas I will go to jennah on the other side.
But in actual fact if we are not finding within our hearts that courage to present this holistic vision of Islam to the society then we are really just paying lip service to this whole practise of Islam. And of course we do find certain sections of the Muslim community getting involved politically but what that seems to entail is a kind of engagement that entails a lot of compromise. I am quite surprised after 150 years of colonialism that Muslims have not woken up to the fact that you play a certain game and think that if you compromise or adjust yourself or adapt yourself – play the requisite games – if you think you are going to gain from that you are mistaken.
If we are going to have a stronger month of Ramadan the community as a whole needs to be stronger from its roots and playing certain geo political games with certain governments or government organisations is not a sufficient politics for the Muslim community. There are followers of the Ahl Al Bayt in this room, the progeny of the Holy Prophet and his family who had a very clean ethics. They had a very clean, dignified ethics and they were also living under governments who were playing all sorts of geo political games around them and were playing games with them also.
The inheritors of the position of the Holy Prophet (pbuh), the imams were leading their communities within these very difficult situations. What we can see from the imams is they always took the opportunity to teach. They also had an understanding that they were not making social and ethical compromises with the existing caliphate or the existing system. They were often very direct when the spoke about against governments who were trying to co opt them or appropriate their message.
They were very direct, not shouting, not kicking up a fuss but they were very clear this is the line between me and you. This is the line which I don’t cross because I am founded on a very clear honest and clean ethical practise that I am not going to cross. And we as a community who follow the progeny of the Holy Prophet and his progeny who have this wealth of teachings need to get into those teachings much more deeply. We need to read them in much more depth and present the vision of the Holy Prophet and his progeny to this society so we are neither Muslims who are panicking and scared and apologising and putting up all these not in my name kind of statements.
We are neither that, nor are we the other types of Muslims that have pretty much chucked out all of our ethics. They feel they have to chuck all of this out in order to make gains. We are not going to make gains if we don’t sideline a lot of things that are teaching us about our ethical behaviour. We do not want to be either of those. We have this beautiful message. I do not know how realistic this vision is but I think it is a vision that is worth holding on to.
Number one we have a vision that is based upon being very deeply educated in terms of the cultivation of the mind, the cultivation of the intellect and being educated in the whole history of global civilisations, being educated in languages and that should also include ideally – and I should point to myself first – Hebrew and Greek perfect our Arabic, Persian and many other languages and come to specialise in those so we can understand many other cultures.
Be well educated in religions. We want a lot of people to understand Islam. We go to a lot of effort to help people to understand Islam. But how much do we understand of other people’s religions also.
And also the sciences. We really need to get up to date with quantum physics which I am starting to look into a little bit but to become well versed in the arguments and the debates that are going on in relation to reality. Science is rooted in reality and Islam is about reality, it is about how we perceive reality and what is the basis of this reality.
We need to get back to cultivating within ourselves sincerity. It is very important because what I have seen among the youth, the young Muslims, is that they can see the corruption going on in our communities. Those who are engaging in corruption might think that they are not seen and they are now known. But they are seen and they are known. If we have corruption in our communities which is seen very clearly by the next generations, those generations are going to turn away and detach themselves. They will feel disheartened.
Young people want people they can look up to and inspire and offer them guidance. And if they look around and see that they can’t turn to this person because this is going on and I can’t turn to that person because this is going on, have you heard about this going on, what about that report. What kind of world are we creating for our youth and our next generations.
With all the lectures that are trying to encourage the youth to be better Muslims we need to strive to set an example within ourselves and to clean up within ourselves before we are going out onto those minbars and those lecture halls and trying to keep the youth informed of the teachings of Islam.
So it is about sincerity and if anyone is going to come back to the path of sincerity and that could be anybody within our community whether hidden or public. If anyone is going to come back to the path of sincerity this means coming back to the path of reality. When we decide to return back to the sincerity within our heart, the sincere me, the true me we are coming back to who we truly our within ourselves which is what Islam is trying to cultivate within us.
It is trying to cultivate a self knowledge within ourselves. We are trying to cultivate a way of life where we see beyond the illusions of the external world. It is also a way of life that is trying to cultivate a way of life where we see beyond the illusions within our own selves about our own selves. It is quite a scary thought if think we are going to go through 40, 50 60, 70 years of life deluded about who we are or deluded about what the world is and not being who we really are as well.
The masters of this path say that a Muslim is someone who is on the inside what he is on the outside. So it’s about being a real person. It is about not being a fake person. The funny thing about people who sometimes play games with other people or mental games or head games or engage in deception is that those people often deceive themselves as well. Those people are often playing games with themselves as well.
The funny thing is that they might not realise that other people can see them playing games with themselves. That is kind of ironic. So we need to cut the game playing, the head games, the strategising and just cut that clear path in terms of our actions, in terms of our intention and try to become as it is said in Arabic ahlan al haqiaq, the people of reality. The people of truth because this is the most beautiful thing that we can offer this world. It is not offering a vision of truth under the Labour label, or the Conservative Party label or the Green label because what we are doing as well is trying to offer a partial vision of this truth within the framework of our secular politics. We are only offering half of the vision to the society if that – a quarter of the vision. It is a corrupted vision. I am not saying don’t engage with different political parties but at the same time don’t make that the only way that you are engaging and challenge people, challenge ourselves, on how we are perceiving this reality. We don’t want to leave this world having been engaged in all of the activities that we have been doing and come to our death bed and say ‘I still don’t know what the truth is, I still haven’t worked it out. I have been so busy doing x, y and z.’ Campaigning for Muslim rights and getting involved with this and that group but I still haven’t really worked out what existence is and what reality is and whether I was perceiving reality in the way that Allah wants me to perceive it.
The fear that has haunted me for many years is the fear that I may pass out of this life having lived most of it in a dream and not having seen it how it is. So it’s about the people of reality so that we have this vision to offer in addition to whatever else we are trying to offer the society.
I can probably conclude with the topic of intention. In Islam intention is considered as action and it is very important what your intention is when you take an action. So the month of Ramadan begins with an intention to fast for that month with the aim of drawing close to God. And what we mean by drawing close to God is a whole other subject but part of it is knowing God, knowing that transcendent reality. So we are starting the holy month with that intention of being able to perceive more clearly and apprehend more clearly that transcendent reality that lies beyond appearances and contingent reality.
And the Holy Prophet (pbuh) and his holy progeny said when resurrection comes a summons will be heard by all on the plain of gathering. The summoner will say where are those who worshipped other human beings. Rise up, go seek your reward from those who you desired to please with your acts. I do not accept deeds tainted by worldly intent.
This is a month when we need to reflect on the underlying intention behind our actions be it in our families, our work, social activities political activities. Our intention in practising Islam. Sometimes we can get into this practise and it becomes like a habit and the roots going down into our intention have become weaker. We have lost touch with what our fundamental intention should be. And above all we should not have this intention of taking an action for the sake of trying to get a gain out of another human being.
Of course we want to make people happy so pleasing someone with your acts does not mean that we are not trying to make them happy. We are trying to make people happy, to bring a smile to their faces which is something you do not often see in the media but Muslims actually do want to make people smile, believe it or not.
It is not about that. It is about ultimately, what is the ultimate intention behind your actions. The ultimate intention is to know that transcendent reality. So he said the value of deeds depends upon underlying it. I remember there was a narration by the Prophet and his holy progeny which said that in the holy month of Ramadan some people fast and some people just go hungry and thirsty.
There is a difference between just giving up food and drink and not having that intention in your heart to work upon yourself and actually having that intention. They are two very different things. So it is about getting back to that sincerity of intention, the word for intention is ikhlas and in Islam it is a whole science, cultivating the sincerity of intention.
There is a verse in the Holy Quran which says Allah has brought about this creation in order that he might test you in order to see which of you is better in his deeds (Chapter 67 verse 62). Imam Al Sadiq the sixth imam said God created this existence in order to test you to see who is better in your deeds. He said that what is meant here is not the extent of the quantity of deeds, but the highest degree of righteousness. Righteousness consists of the fear of God, sincerity of intention and purity of deed. To keep a deed utterly sincere and free of all contamination is more difficult than doing the deed itself. A sincere deed is one in which only God’s pleasure is sought and not someone’s praise. The intention is better than the deed or even identical to the deed because to quote the Holy Quran “everyone acts in accordance with his own nature (Chapter 7 verse 84) [which means according to his intention].
We can conclude that on a collective level we need to go back to the sincerity of intention in our hearts, in our actions and this is an urgent request to all of our organisations across the world that we need to go back to that sincereity of action and intention if we are not going to lose our subsequent upcomoing generations.
The science of Islam is all about cleansing away the debris of illusions that collect upon the heart and getting back to the truth and what a human being is. We need to revive the humanity within our communities and revvie and awareness of what it means to be a human being within our communities.
*Dr Rebecca Masterton has graduated with a BA in Japanese Language and Literature; an MA in Comparative East Asian and African Literature and a PhD in the Islamic literature of West Africa, in which she critiqued the effects of secularism and colonialism upon traditional Islamic teachings on the self, from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She converted to Islam in 1999 and came to the Shī‘ī path in 2003. Her interests include the Shī‘ī roots of Islamic mysticism; comparative literature and comparative philosophy. Dr Masterton has been teaching for nearly fifteen years through different media, including one-to-one tuition; short courses at Birkbeck College, University of London; BA and MA programmes at the Islamic College in London, both in-house and on-line; and on-line classes for the Islamic Institute for Postgraduate Studies (Damascus and Birmingham). She has also lectured widely at conferences both in Europe and the United States. She has also worked in the media for ten years, producing and presenting programmes for Sahar TV, Press TV, Hadi TV and Ahlulbayt TV. She published many articles and three books: A History of Spirituality in Europe: from Pharaonic Times to the Present Day (London: ICAS Press, forthcoming), 300pps, The Moral World of the Qur’an, by M. A. Draz (London: IB Tauris, 2008) and Passing Through the Dream,(London: Light Reading, 2008)
******Father Laurence Hillel has studied at four British Universities, predominantly History and Theology, and holds an MA in South Asian Studies from SOAS and an MA in Christianity and Interreligious Relations from Heythrop College. He is an ordained priest in the Church of England and is currently serving at St Anne’s Brondesbury. In his current role as Co-Director of the London Inter Faith Centre and the Bishop of Willesden’s Inter Faith Adviser, he has contacts with a range of Muslim institutions. He was previously Chaplain at Bishop Ramsey Church of England Secondary School Ruislip.
***Ausaf Farooqi was a former IT consultant and manager of several companies for eighteen years before his early retirement. He obtained a degree in Mathematics. For more than three decades, he was the managing editor of Impact magazine – a unique Islamic publication.
