Open Discussions / Gulf Cultural Club Ramadan Experience Discussion: Fasting as a catalyst for personal and world’s peace
Tuesday, 22nd May 2018
*Dr Isa Jahangir (Academic)
**Marigold Bentley (Peace activist with the Quakers)
***Luqman Ali (Artistic Director, Khayaal Theatre)
Peace is what decent people aspire to achieve and what the world today desperately needs. In the midst of the turbulence of modern life, the lack of peace on personal and world levels has become endemic. Whether due to excessive materialism, traditional wars, political repression or terrorism there are deep feelings of unease among the inhabitants of this planet. Fasting is a practical way to tame the evil tendencies that often lead to tension, enmity and wars. The holy month of Ramadan provides the opportunity to achieve self-control, inner-cleansing, spiritual ascendance and peace with the self and the others. How can this practice be promoted to achieve personal and world’s peace?
Chairman: Ramadan gives us the chance of beginning some kind of dialogue with people of other faiths and no faith. Peace is what decent people aspire to achieve and what the world today desperately needs. In the midst of the turbulence of modern life, the lack of peace on personal and world levels has become endemic. Whether due to excessive materialism, traditional wars, political repression or terrorism there are deep feelings of unease among the inhabitants of this planet. Fasting is a practical way to tame the evil tendencies that often lead to tension, enmity and wars. The holy month of Ramadan provides the opportunity to achieve self-control, inner-cleansing, spiritual ascendance and peace with the self and the others. How can this practice be promoted to achieve personal and world’s peace?
Luqman Ali: Salam Aleikum. I would first like to thank our hosts for inviting me to address you tonight on this topic which is very close to me personally, especially given that I was born in this month on the 10th. So every Ramadan I am coming home. I am coming back to where I began. The reflections are becoming deeper, more profound, more transformative and more completing of my own personal journey in this world and on my return to the one.
I can best describe my talk as a series of reflections but I want to end those reflections on the relationship between fasting and imagination because most of my work revolves around the imagination. When I give talks on fasting I refer to my favourite hadith the hadith al Miraj which is a narration that took place during the Prophet’s ascension.
There was a conversation described as having taken place between the Prophet and Allah. What is the benefit of fasting? What does fasting bequeath? Allah said fasting bequeaths wisdom and wisdom bequeaths knowledge of Allah specifically. Knowledge of Allah bequeaths certainly.
Allah says when a servant attains to the certainty he cares not how they awake in the morning – whether it be in difficulty or in ease. The significance of this last portion of the hadith really shows the connection between fasting and peace. In order for a human being to attain to peace he or she has to reconcile those aspects of consciousness and those aspects of life experience which appear to be irreconcilable: restriction and expansion, inflation and deflation, being in time and being out of time. Being material and being spiritual.
Unless this dichotomy is reconciled and is healed and unified ultimately through wisdom and then through knowledge and then through certainty then the human being is constantly in various stages of negotiation between multiplicity and duality – contending forces which buffet him or her from one side to the other.
We pay tribute to this on the haj between safwa and marva when the human being is in this state of duality. Allah created a human being in this great state of distress as a result of having been catapulted out of this unique state of consciousness that Adam and Hawa initially inhabited into this state of multiplicity.
We know from the Quran that before eating the fruit of the tree, the forbidden tree symbolically speaking, Adam and Hawa had no consciousness of their being different from one another. Indeed Allah said when they ate from the tree their difference became apparent to them. They became conscious of their private parts and of their genders. Before that, there was no consciousness of them being different at an existential level.
So eating from the tree can be described as the tree of knowledge between good and evil, the tree of knowledge of separation. This is a reality which fasting comes to heal. It heals us of this dichotomy of being material and being spiritual, between being awake and being asleep.
There was a beautiful essay written by one of our brothers in Australia. Some of you may have seen it. His name was Rod Blackhurst. He said that our consciousness moves between sleep and wakefulness. He talks about how fasting tricks the body into believing that it is asleep while it is awake. The liver cycle which is a 24 hour night-day cycle which usually kicks into play when we are asleep kicks into play during the day when we are fasting because it assumes due to the lack of ingestion or consumption we are asleep so the liver cycle becomes active.
The ancient peoples have always understood that the liver cycle is the seat of dreams and visions. Here is the connection between the imagination and fasting: ultimately the human being through fasting reaches a place where he reconciles between sleep and wakefulness. We reconcile between the day and the night. So we reach a state of the union, a state of unity. It is another expression of tawhid. We have two expressions of tawhid. We have multiplicity in unity and unity in multiplicity crystalising out of the experience of fasting.
I am going back to the story of Adam and Hawa. In a conversation with Imam Sadiq he is asked a series of questions and according to the narrations, one of the questions is why is the fast for 30 days. He answers because it took 30 days for the effects of the forbidden fruit to be purged from Adam’s system. This is not literal. It is symbolic. It is to say that for the effects of engagement with secondary causes to run its course and for the human being to return to the state of unity he or she has to go through this process of if you like subordinating sensory engagements and privileging super sensory engagements. We see this beautifully in the story of Mariam and Zakariya. Zakariya asks Allah to bless him with a child even though he is old and his wife is barren he is blessed with the good news.
He asks Allah to give him a sign. Allah says that the sign is that you will now not speak to human beings for three days except by gesture. We have a sunnah where the people of Allah are refraining from engaging with their senses in order to receive that which is supersensory, that which is transcendent and revelatory in a form of a spirit from Allah.
We see this throughout the lives of the prophets and friends of the prophets. Their way of attaining to the highest pinnacle to the presence of Allah consciousness is to downgrade their engagement with secondary causes.
This crescent which we fight over whether we see it or not. The emergence of the moon is the symbol of the emergence of secondary causes. In actual fact, it is not only beholden to us to restrain ourselves from engagement in secondary causes during the blessed month of Ramadan but from the entirety of life. Ramadan is a constant period of disciplining which is applicable to the entirety of life. From the moment we descent from pre-time from Allah we are in the domain of secondary causes. We are in the domain of perceiving reality through dispersed multiplicities of many kinds. In our practice of sahdeh, we actually practise this. We have to put seven parts of our body onto the ground to diminish the inherent dispersion in multiplicity. So we ground that multiplicity into the earth in order to signify this state of oneness.
So not eating, not drinking not having sexual relations, not lying, not cheating – all of the various things which have a much deeper spiritual significance which has to do with our preparedness to receive the Quran. The Quran is light. It is also ruh (spirit) of the personal iman. Allah said “in this way we have revealed a spirit to you” to come from our command.
Along with being attentive to abstainsions, we have to be attentive to receptions. Ramadan is not just about denial. It is also about a state of acceptance, a state of translucency, transparency of self where Leila al kadr – that moment that is better than a thousand months. It is better than a thousand months. This is the place of convergence of awareness, witness, whyness – all of these various major questions of existence converge upon this moment.
But unless there is preparedness there will be no moment. The moment will not be captured. We will not have the receptivity to recognise and to engage with this moment. Without this moment human beings from a Quranic point of view is not validated. We validate our lives through the experience of leilat al qadr. Qadr destiny, qadr power. This is so profound that you have to use a number of various words to understand its scope and significance.
I exhort myself and my brothers and sisters who are fasting and those who are observing the Muslim fast to think about these deeper significances, to think of the relationship of fasting with the experience of the phenomena of existence and how it is that we are called upon as this fast is prescribed on you as it was prescribed on those before you. So think about how this experience is a very quintessence of what it means to authenticate yourself as an Adamic human being, to authenticate and fulfil your purpose. Leilat al qadr is also the conversion of ascension and mission. All of these things come together. It is implied that the advent of peace in the life of a human being is only born out of the experience of Leilat al qadr. It is only born out of the reconciliation of duality and multiplicity.
“Whosoever confirms to knowledge, the complementary of opposing forces, or polarities attains to the desired goal.” We only see ourselves. What happens through fasting is that you so cleanse or so render the self-transparent and so illuminate the self through the light in a way which Allah says in a beautiful duwa: make my eyes light, make my ears light. Allah understood that duwa on the tongue is not enough. There has to be an active duwa of fasting, of salat of zakat in order for that luminosity to take hold of the human being and transform that human being into light and radiance and make their illumination possible. In that dawn arising from Lailat al kadr is peace.
So the person who attains to that experience of Lailat al kadr is that person who is eligible for peace. When a person has truly experienced peace – not a momentary feeling of satisfaction because you instantaneously gratify yourself with something – but a state of ongoing enduring peace. That person can become a peacemaker in their families, in their societies, in the world and this he is ultimately called to do. Allah says spread peace and give people well.
So this act of fasting that we are fortunate to be engaged in now is what it means to authenticate the profession of Islam in so far as peace is bound up in Islam to be in a state of peace is to be in a state of surrender a state of acceptance of the fact that we in our essential beingness are transcendent, we are beyond the material and we have a vertical celestial identity to which we aspire.
I will end my reflection with a saying from Jesus. He says let thine be single. Tawhid has two expressions: multiplicity in unity, unity in multiplicity. All of the Islamic art evolves around these two poles. Let thine eye be single and thy body shall be full of light.
Marigold Bentley: Thank you very much for the first presentation. It is one of the practices of the Quakers, Society of Friends, to speak to the conditional and the people that you are with. So I can think of the condition you might all be in if you are fasting and I presume many of you are.
The challenge before me is to try and speak to this particular topic from the point of view of us as a small dissenting faith. I have looked very carefully at our own traditions in order to try and speak at this very intense time as it is because we have no tradition of fasting. I have had to think really hard what is it beyond that that we are all trying to do together given that this is the kind of conversation we are trying to have this evening and given our differences. What are our commonalities, what are our differences, what can we really talk about together given this huge spread of ideas and a huge spread of faithful commitment that we have just heard about from Lukman which has been absolutely fascinating to me.
I have had to look into Quaker history and for those of you who don’t know Quakers in Britain started during the civil war here in England and it was a time of enormous turbulence and the first time the people read the bible for themselves and interpreted it for themselves. So those Quakers who challenged the state on the many issues that were around at the time were enormously persecuted for making those challenges so that must have meant they had a very profound and very deep commitment.
Fifteen thousand Quakers were jailed by 1689. So Quakers had only been around 20 years by that time. They were that committed that many of them sacrificed their lives for their belief. Our traditional title is the Religious Society of Friends for the truth. At the time the Quakers had an interpretation of the truth which led them to behave in certain ways.
One particular aspect of that was to say that they lived in a place beyond war. The only weapons that the Quakers were allowed to use were weapons of the spirit. So I have looked very carefully at the New Testament which we still read particularly to see what it is about our bodies that we are trying to engage with and deal with in times of great challenge. What is the purpose of this beyond the practical things that we.
Saint Paul said to the Corinthians “do you not know that your bodies are temples of the holy spirit who is in you who you have received from God. You are not your own you were brought to the Christ; therefore honour God with your bodies. I think there is a kind of theme that we just heard about where we are vehicles of something else as human beings.
So also in Corinthians, it says “don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s spirit dwells in your midst.” So you are the temple and you are sacred – those are the two elements that you have to focus on.
There is also a pattern of people offering up their bodies to please God, to serve God and again that is an element of what is considered true and proper and worship. I do think there are lots of linkages and connections that we can make with the kind of practices that many of you are engaged in and the types of teachings that Christians also have in terms of focusing.
One of the particular aspects of Quakerism when I looked at texts to help me prepare for this evening and I must admit I found it really hard – we have rather than direct instruction as Quaker a practice of asking ourselves questions and that is part of our discipline Rather than being told you must do this, you must do that it is thought for yourself.
One of the reasons for this is that Quakers understood themselves to be in the end times and we still apply many of that teaching now. We understood ourselves to be in the end time and therefore Christ was re-emerging and being understood within in each Quaker as there is the divine in you as there is for everyone. You ask yourself the question because guidance will come. So we have the practice of asking ourselves questions and one of them which is our first we-we have a booklet called Advises and Queries: “Take heed dear friends to the promptings of the love and truth in your hearts. Trust in the promptings of God whose light shows us our darkness and brings us to new life.”
What I hear and what I read I sense from the discipline of fasting and of course, there are many Christian fasts is how do we engage with those promptings? What conditions do we put in place which enable us to really engage with the depth of spirituality which we acknowledge is possible within every human being? So we are really searching hard for those promptings.
One of the things one of the early Quakers John Fox said – we have his diaries in Friends House which are in Euston Road – He did explore fasting. He did look at fasting during much of his scriptural exploration. He said a true fast is one which raises the foundations of many generations. It is not the hanging the head down like a bulrush. Fasting to the Lord is being faithful. So again I think there are lots of threads that we can pick up and engage with even though we have so many different practices and so many different traditions among us and probably among us in the room. So as a peace church we are constantly trying to engage with the best of everybody. The best that you can possibly be and acknowledging that everyone has that special gift that enables us to be the best that we can be.
The Christian tradition of fasting, particularly during Lent and Advent, has two very specific purposes. The Lentan one is obviously is preparing for Easter which for Christians is the most important feast and the other one is the coming of Advent waiting for the birth of Christ.
One of the aspects of Quakerism is the fear that if you engage too much in rituals for rituals own sake it can lose its meaning and I suspect that one reason for having an evening like this evening and other conversations about what Ramadan really means is that it must be more than a ritual. It must be more than something that we always do. It has a deeper meaning and I am sure we will hear more about that.
Simply because a faith does not have any obvious outward promptings or obvious outward discipline doesn’t in my view necessarily mean that we are less faithful. I think we all share the aspect that the body is a gift. It needs to be controlled and channelled and it is a vehicle for pursuing God’s love for the world even though you may use other languages than that.
So I think overall there are an enormous similarities and useful aspects of conversation in terms of what we are all trying to do as faithful people together and what we are all trying to engage with in terms of other practices going on around us and most particularly how we engage as faithful people with those who don’t understand, who don’t recognise and who find any kind of religious practice both a challenge and something foreign and different.
We all need to develop a robust language so that we can have an honest conversation about why these practices matter, about how valuable they can be and about why we need to listen to one another in terms of some of our differences.
Chairman: One of the phrases that Sister Marigold used was weapons of the spirit. We speak of weapons of mass destruction. I think this is a good phrase to take away from here to have some weapons of the spirit especially during this one month of fasting. I hope we as Muslims would be able to enhance those weapons of spirit so that we can stand up to the weapons of mass destruction, weapons of mass fabrication, fake news or whatever. May the spirituality that we imbibe allow us to challenge the other weapons that are around all the time.
Sheikh Dr Isa Jahangir: Salam aleikum. I am very grateful to God the Almighty to be with you on this great day and this great evening to share my thoughts on fasting in this great panel. I have to thank the organisers of the event. I want to start with a verse of the Quran about peace and I am going to relate the verse to the concept of fasting in the month of Ramadan.
In chapter 2 of Al Barara (verse 208) we read: “O believers enter into peacefulness collectively all of you and do not follow the steps of Satan who is a particular enemy for you.” To me, the verse has a few interesting points. Iman has been discussed extensively by Muslim and non-Muslim scholars. To me, Iman describes all people who are seeking the truth. All truth seekers and true followers are categorised under the category of iman – faith.
The main other umbrellas would be the umbrella of tabot or shatan. We can see this duality in many verses of the Quran. A famous verse of the Quran is Ayat Al Qudsi 5 and 5/7 of Al Barara. There are two groups, the truth seekers and the taout – the wrong doers and the wrong followers.
“All of you collectively enter into peace.” We do not have this kind of emphasis on other aspects like jihad. But when it comes to peace, being at peace, making peace and spreading peace than God says “enter the peacefulness.” Don’t follow shatan. Shatan is the enemy, the source of animosity and conflict. Shatan is the source of disagreements and divisions.
What was wrong with Shatan. From the Islamic perspective, Shatan was discussed a bit differently. But what was wrong with Shatan. I am talking from the Islamic perspective. The Quran says that the big problem with Shatan was istakfar. He was arrogant. He was terribly self centered and selfish. Because of this arrogance and selfishness he refused to obey the command of Allah and respect for Allah.
On the other side, Adam made a mistake because of his desire. He had been told not to get close to the tree and not to eat that fruit but because of the temptation of Shatan he ate. Desire. There is a beautiful quote from one of the urafa, Nun Al Masri, an Egyptian scholar and mystic. He says in a very general classification the mistakes and sins of human beings can be categorised.
One is the mistakes and sins of people which are rooted in arrogance. This is one group of sins. Another group of sins is rooted in lower desires. The desires to eat, drink, have sex and so many things. Masri says that if the sin is rooted in the desires the likelihood for it to be forgiven is more than that of those sins which are rooted in arrogance and egoism.
The sin of shatan was rooted in arrogance. He was comparing himself with Adam saying I am made from fire and Adam is made from clay. Masri says it was difficult for Shatan to repent and go back and be forgiven. The mistake of Adam was rooted in the lower desire. The desire to eat. Then he was able to repent and go back and he was forgiven.
That is the main issue of Satan which is the source of animosity, the source of wars, battles, disagreements and conflicts in human communities. For me, fasting is one of those tools by which and through which we can practise the whole process of overcoming these two issues. One is arrogance and egoism and the second one is the lower desires.
What is arrogance? To me, it is the wrong impression of yourself, the wrong impression of your position in the universe. It is a wrong understanding of oneself in the whole cosmos. It is a wrong or immature reply to the process of becoming mature and the issue of development. We become older and older, we become mature but sometimes the response we give to our own maturity or development is not suitable to the process and pace of that development. Arrogance – seeing yourself as more than you really are – comes in.
Fasting can help us to overcome that wrong impression. Fasting can help us to realise that we are not that strong. Fasting can help us to realise that there are weaknesses which we have. With the lower group of desires, fasting can help us also overcome desires: the desire to eat, the desire to drink, the desire to do so many things.
So in a general conclusion fasting is a good tool for self-control. Sometimes in some Muslim traditions and circles, people who have issues with self-control are recommended by teachers and mentors to practise fasting, the power of self-determination and self-control. I am not sure if it is a good recommendation or not. This is what has happened in the course of time.
When I was doing my hausa studies I had some friends who used to do fasting. The recommended fast not the obligatory fast just to practise the way they could control themselves.
Ramadan is a good season, a good opportunity to refresh our connection with the origin, with the Lord who is the source of stability and peace which is the source of tranquillity and knowledge. This is the month which has been given to refresh, to reconsider and to give another try to re-establish reinforce and strengthen that link to our source. We are transcendental.
How can we be at peace and how can we be peacemakers peace builders and peace promoters? Let me share my understanding of the peace. Number one sometimes in the literature of social sciences they mean by peace a general kind of social stability or awareness to be free from riots, conflicts and social disagreements and divisions and issues. Social stability is one kind of peace.
The second meaning of peace could be the return to the idea of security and order whether it is rooted in law or public opinion or customs and conventions and norms of society. This is the second meaning of peace. The third meaning is not having that concern about the intervention or encroachment of others into your land. Just being in peace in your mind that there will be no intervention, no encroachment, no offence from others into your borders, realm and country.
Number four. Peace could also be understood as a solution for the battles and the disputes. So when you reconcile and settle down, there is also peace. Number five is the best one which could be understood by the Quran, by the bible which could be acquired through Ramadan and by fasting.
Peace in that sense is a social communication. It is not a solution that a battle happens. It is a kind of communication, connection and relations based on calmness, stability and security, based on peacefulness and trust. To me that connection, that communication, which is the spirit dominant throughout the whole communication and relations between people which are based on that trust and confidence, stability and tranquillity. This type of peace.
I am going to tell you how we can have this kind of peace and how we can be peacemakers and peace builders. The first Shia imam passed away on the 21st of Ramadan. On 20th of Ramadan he left a beautiful will to his two sons Hassan and Hussein. The iman says I heard from the Prophet saying that reconciliation is better than fasting and praying. That love based connection between people.
How can that peace be acquired? Apparently what we can understand from the Quran and from the school of Ramadan and the lessons of fasting is that this type of peace should come from the inside first. If you don’t have it you can’t grant it to others. We say in Hausa lessons if you do not possess it you can’t give it to others.
There has to be that inner peace. You have to feel at peace within yourself. You have to be clear within yourself to be able to be peace granters, to be able to be peacemakers. To be a leader and an imam towards peace.
What is the way of doing it? Again I am going back to the Quran and to Ramadan. So psychologists have good points about how we can have inner peace. To a large extent, I agree with so many techniques and advice and solutions that they give. But I am not going to google the advice of psychologists about how we can have that inner peace. I will speak based on my understanding of the Quran.
The Quran tells us that one of the best ways to bring that peace to yourself is to make harmony between your actions, your emotions and your thoughts. We have different tendencies. Sometimes our tendencies take us in this direction and then another group of tendencies take us in another direction. That conflict, battle, disagreement, inner riot happens.
We need inner peace. One of the best ways is to make harmony between thoughts and emotions and actions. We can’t make that harmony at all times. Sometimes in the way we speak, there is no rationality. The way we act is emotional. Sometimes we say that it is emotional, labelling emotion as something very cheap.
With due respect, I do not agree with this. Emotion is based on faith specifically in religious traditions. In my understanding, it is very difficult to draw a line between intellect and emotion. You can’t say to someone you are being emotional. This is emotion. It is not intellectual. This is not rational. It sometimes gets very difficult to distinguish and discern exactly the realm of reason and rationality from the realm of emotion.
The imam said one of the best ways to have inner peace and give it to others is to have an expansion of the chest. It is one of those concepts which it is difficult to translate into English. It means to have that tolerance and forbearance that openness of mind, having higher horizons and then the translation of having higher horizons in your mentality and approach to actions. This is a necessary tool for someone who wants to be an imam a prophet, a leader a manager.
The Prophet asked Allah how have you appointed me to be a prophet? Give me patience, give me tolerance. The heart of Ibrahim was as big as the heart of the whole nation. Ibrahim is the father of all Ibrahimic religions. His heart was as big and as receptive and accepting as the heart of all the ummah. If you do not have that openness of your heart you will not be able to have that tolerance and that patience.
Again one of the best tools is to connect yourself with the source of peace and stability. One issue is that we become angry very quickly. But if you broaden and expand your horizon you get connected to your source and you would not become angry very quickly because your issues are much higher issues.
Let me give you an example. You see kids. They play with clay. We used to build things and then we used to fight with one another about the things we had made. When our parents saw us they would laugh. Look at these kids fighting over the things they have made. They can destroy these things and build them again.
We fight over the same things but on a much larger scale. We fight over large houses, cars and power. If we get connected to our source we can laugh at the issues and disagreements that we had on a social and international level. In my understanding the miracle of the prophets, of Isa, Musa and Mohamed was their ability to bring the hearts of the people together.
My last word. I am quoting Gandhi. He said no one can hurt me without my permission. If you have that self-control, that tolerance, that open-mindedness that open heart than no one can hurt it unless you allow it.
*Sheikh Dr Isa Jahangir studied Islamic studies at the Seminary of Qum and completed his BA and MA in Sociology, and a PhD in Culture and Communication Studies. He Has taught different subjects regarding Islamic studies and Muslim social thought. Currently he is the principal of the Islamic College, London (An Academic Partner with Middlesex University). He has published many books and papers on Shia and Islamic studies.
** Marigold Bentley is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and has worked on behalf of Quakers nationally and internationally for over 30 years. Her work has included service work in the Occupied Territories and Egypt during the 1980’s, and at the Quaker United Office in New York. During the 1990’s she worked in peace education, particularly in Northern Ireland and the former Yugoslavia. She currently Head of Peace Programmes and Faith Relations for Quakers in Britain. She is a member of the Rethinking Security Group.
*** Luqman Ali is CEO & Artistic Director, Khayaal Theatre. He initially trained in the sciences of Islam and the languages (Arabic, Persian and Urdu) and cultures of the Middle East and the Sub-continent. He spent a decade working for publishing houses in the USA and the UK. In 1997, Luqman co-founded Khayaal, the first professional theatre company of its kind offering audiences a fascinating experience of classic Muslim world culture through contemporary stagecraft. He went on to pioneer the theatrical interpretation of the tales of Jalaluddin Rumi and Fariduddin Attar producing numerous theatrical shorts including Four Mystics and a Merchant, Bad Beard Day, Between the Devil & Me and Tattoos in Qazvin. In 2004, he broadened the scope of his work adapting traditional tales from right across the Muslim world in Tales from Muslim Lands which included Peony Garden on Nanshan Mountain, Bling Bling Blind, Incey Witty Spider and Man Take Thy Flight.Luqman’s latest works are Sun & Wind, a spiritual reflection on extremism and Hearts & Minds, a theatre-in-education play for young people exploring issues of identity, citizenship and extremism. Luqman is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Ariane de Rothschild Fellowship and a member of the Concordia Forum.
