Why We Fast: The Theological Danger Of Awkward Apologetics

Awkward Apologetics 

There are certain tried and tested truisms that are triumphantly hurled towards inquisitors testing the rationality of rites received by revelation that, in the process, betray the revelation they are meant to defend. Modern man is thoroughly desacralized by skepticism of spirituality born from witnessing sinister intentions hidden in sacred language, by devils parading in the robes of popes and priests whose insatiable greed for personal ambition and enrichment consumed the souls of those they claimed to lead.

In many ways, Europe’s heart collectively broke after the 30 Years War, and it has never found the courage to hope again; rather, it has preferred to erect a cathedral for a civilization of cynicism atop the ashes of the charred remains of its burned and buried religion. Western thought is a grand pantheon built upon the graveyard of fallen ancestors, where centuries-old wailing over ruined dreams still echoes in its halls like a dull backdrop to the worship of its new idols.

The legacy of colonialism exported the bitterness of survivors of a failed religion and unceremoniously coronated it as the intellectual king to whom the minds of all peoples of the world were unwilling subjects. The love of God and betterment of man have become oppositional categories in the European mind, and it is his voice that echoes in the recesses of our heart, stirring anxieties of irrationality that manifest in insecure apologetics.

So, when we are pressed to address the purpose of the faith we confess, we must bend and shake, rend and break the coherence of the very things we claim to believe simply to assuage the cynicism that reverberates in the deepest recesses of our own minds. Everything we do must be transformed into the material benefit of man; it is not enough to say that the purpose of our entire existence is God Himself.

So, when we are asked the purpose of the fast, we proudly proclaim, “the benefit of man! Do you not see that hunger and thirst make us less averse to assist in the existence of all the poor? That fasting brings the body health; that hunger teaches us to disburse our wealth; that we learn the discipline we need to achieve all we want and more?”

Where, then, is the place of God who commands? The place of obedience to demands from Him who holds our lives between his hands? Where is the place of “I listen and obey,” of punishment for those gone astray, of examples of Prophets who left their families alone in the desert sands?

We are turned into slaves of the material, of time and space, of benefit and harm, of the temporal limitations of a usurper mind that rules with an iron fist over the kingdom of an infinite heart. There is only one method to break the shackles we’ve accepted: “Say, if you love Allah, follow me! Allah will love you.”

The True Purpose of Fasting

Is taqwā not a benefit enough for us to gain; is His Pleasure and Promise not worth the self-restraint? Why must we conjecture and contrive when we can easily find the purpose in His most divine speech itself:

“O believers! Fasting is prescribed for you—as it was for those before you—so that you may practice taqwā.” [Surah Al-Baqarah; 2:183]

Sometimes, the performance is the purpose; the form is the function; the pain is the point. What is this taqwā that is mentioned, how can it be understood? Recall when ʿUmar b. Al-Khattāb questioned ʿUbayy b. Kaʿab (may Allah be pleased with them both) about taqwā. Recall the latter’s response, that taqwā is like walking upon a road beset by thorns, so you gather your clothes and walk carefully by.

To have taqwā is to be in constant mindfulness of the presence of Allah , that every breath that is breathed, and every image that is seen, and every sound that is heard, and the utterance of every unkind word, is known by Allah . Taqwā is to protect oneself from the displeasure of Allah by finding respite in the love of Allah : “and they realized that there is no refuge from Allah except in Him.”

To fast is to turn the entire body into a vehicle that reminds of Allah . Every pang of hunger that causes sudden bursts of anger; every scratch in a thirsty throat and every night spending the time for sleep in wakeful prayer instead; these all fill with the remembrance of Allah . The form of fasting turns the body into a vehicle for the function of fasting: the pain and discomfort of the practice continuously remind us of the presence of Allah .

This is not to deny that there is material benefit as well: the body does gain health, the heart becomes less attached to wealth, and discipline does become less cumbersome to an unruly mind. But these are not the purposes but the benefit, not the consequence but the beneficence of a God who has taken the whole world into the folds of His infinite mercy. These are rewards for the pursuit of His Pleasure; they are not the purpose themselves.

The Danger of a Materialized Islam

We must be cautious in our apologetics, lest we turn Islam into another material ideology. The disease in the heart of Western thought is bitterness masquerading as arrogance. 

Imagine a man who loved his wife, showered her with attention and affection, love and devotion, spending his night and day in her worship. What, then, when he returns home one day to find that she has always had another man; that he was just a means for her enrichment when her pleasure was at the hands of another? This man roams with a broken heart, warning all about the treachery of a woman’s art, vowing that he will never be fooled again by another demon in a woman’s form.

Shall a man who has a loving wife, the mother of his children and the coolness of his eyes, who loves him and respects him, cares for him as he cares for her, respond to this heartbroken polemicist by adopting his language? Why would a man who has only ever experienced love and devotion from his wife accept the premises of one who has been so horribly betrayed?

The Western mind has still not recovered from the discovery that its chosen religion was nothing more than the plots of the kings and popes to disguise idol worship in the words of a prophet they pretended was God. Its bitterness has desacralized the world, removed all love and intuition, rendering it incomprehensible, reducing everything beautiful and divine to brazen materialism. To engage in apologetics using its own language is to ingest the toxicity of bitterness that is not our own.

We were never betrayed by the religion of God; it was we who betrayed it. And we continue to betray it every time we pretend that the life that was created by Allah , is sustained by Allah , will be brought to an end by Allah , was created to simply live and die without returning to Allah .

We fast for Him and no one else. And everything we gain from it is from His beneficence and nothing else.

Related:

– What Fasting Demands From Us | Mufti Taqi Uthmani

– Prophetic Guidance For An Exemplary Ramadan

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