On the eve of the month of fasting
(Reviewing common and four views, and highlighting the fifth encounter with Ramadan)
Ardeshir Mansouri
May 4, 1399
I think there are four familiar encounters with the month of Ramadan:
1- Traditional approach; Fasting for a month is like a religious duty, leaving it is punishable and keeping it is a divine reward. Strong adherence to Amsak with lots of prayers and rituals (Qur’an on Shab Qadr etc.)!
2- denial approach; Complete silence in front of Ramadan and fasting and attributing it to the personal taste of individuals, indifference at the same time as minimal respect to those who probably find peace with these rites and sediments of the tradition, preparing to spend a difficult month by observing strict appearances in the society and ideological government. , and wait until it is over.
3- Anti-Ramadan; Attempting to prove what harms fasting has from a medical point of view, and what a crime it is against humanity by issuing an order to prohibit even drinking a glass of water on long days for up to 15-16 hours, that is thirty days!
4- Willingly or unwillingly giving in to Ramadan, but with a revisionist view; They can neither leave their religion nor are they satisfied with yesterday’s answers to today’s human questions like their traditionalists. The owners of this view say that these days the fatwas of Mr. Sistani and Mr. Sanei are hand in hand. It is as if he is happy that he can be freed from the burden of a difficult jurisprudential obligation, but of course relying on another jurisprudential understanding. Sometimes they seek to prove that in the Quran the number of wahab days for fasting is, for example, three days and not thirty. This view of the fourths suffers from the difficulty of jurisprudence, but they also do not have the ability to leave jurisprudence and thinking, and by moving from one fatwa to another in There is a way to get rid of the difficulty of this difficult worship, especially for the consumed and pleasure-seeking and insatiable man of the present world. They both want not to leave the religion and not to pay a high price for being religious. According to this perspective, the fourth parties should fight on two fronts with the owners of approach (1) and (3) and spend their energy to eliminate the ridicule of those two groups.
But another look that I would like to introduce next to the four familiar looks:
5- Fasting as a voluntary exercise and as much as possible; By trusting the common understanding of the text and prophetic tradition and in analogy with some other religions, it can be used as an exercise.
First of all, a healthy and ordinary human being, like a large mammal, is physiologically capable enough that not eating and drinking for 15-16 hours does not disturb his life, of course not his excessive pleasure-seeking! Religion and without emphasizing traditional-jurisprudential strictness (which considers breaking fasting as a sin).
Secondly, until further notice, the common understanding of one month can be relative; If he was able, the time horizon would be up to thirty days (which is mentioned in the text “the city of Ramadan”), and if he was not able, it would be up to the amount of the person’s ability (which is mentioned in the text “a limited number of days”). Avoiding eating, drinking, and other pleasures during the day, and paying more attention to spiritual remembrance, was probably the basis for renewing a kind of meaning of life and consolidating moral properties for a person, and also the basis for gaining double physical pleasure, according to the rational rule. Epicurean, (pleasure after the temporary cessation of pleasure, for example al-Fraj after al-Shadda)!
If this fifth point of view is worthy of attention, it is a shame and regret that fasting and Ramadan, on the one hand, have become a manifestation of the violence of religious people against non-fasting people (with the unreasonable strictness of the government to punish “fasting people”), and on the other hand, it has become a place of anti-religious hostility against fasting people. !
#Farheekhtegan, the voice of the wise
This post is written by malishahi