In Ramadan, it is time to judge ourselves, inform ourselves whether or not we are living up to the principles set for us by the Almighty, and pronounced by Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), in diligence and religious fervour.
In Ramadan, we test our ability to relate to faith, to thoughts of life and death. In Ramadan, we remember the dead, we visit their graves to pray for their well-being in the hereafter. In our prayers arise thoughts of the time when we will pass from the scene, when the twilight will claim us.
It is Ramadan, yes. And yet Ramadan is not what it was last year or in the years before the last. This Ramadan is that cruel phase in time when the people of Palestine live under the open sky, are deprived of water and food and other basic necessities of life, and observe the fast with no traditional food items for iftar.
It is Ramadan when bombs obliterate their homes, when powerful men and women in the councils of the world engage in long, fruitless deliberations on the need for a ceasefire to give Palestinians some breathing space in this fire and fury.
All across Gaza, a spot on earth bombed into death and silence, there are the graves of more than 30,000 men, women and children. These people have died for no fault of theirs. And those who live after them do so in the fear that one of these days and nights, even as the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer, they too will perish and join those they have already buried in the dusty, rocky plains of a land under occupation for more than a half century.
When the fast breaks in Palestine, there will be no iftar because the Palestinians who have survived the barbarism of men masquerading as political leaders will have little or nothing to eat. These men on a mission to cleanse Palestine of Palestinians have blocked the path to the transportation of relief for these hapless Palestinians. No persuasion, no threats, no warnings have persuaded them into permitting the decency of allowing a starving people to survive in Ramadan.
There is frantic conversation of a bridgehead of ships from Cyprus to Gaza for food and other aid to be made available to these Palestinians under siege. There are the aircraft dropping food from the sky, compelling young and middle-aged Palestinians to scramble, like inhabitants of primitive times, into the act of grasping for the bags tumbling from the sky.
A nation with a beautiful, rich culture, with its literature a brilliant instance of its creativity, has thus been reduced to threadbare existence through the bombs falling on their homes and hospitals and schools and offices.
And the world does next to nothing to help this nation out of its predicament. The Muslim world, much of it beholden to the West, remains unabashedly silent. Governments across Muslim nations have rendered themselves impotent and do not have the will to act against those who kill Palestinians and those who support these medieval representatives of barbarism in occupied Arab land.
In this month of Ramadan, there will be no lamp emitting light in the homes of pious Muslims anywhere. No good Muslim will be able to place a morsel of food in his mouth at remembrance of the faces of hungry children, those homeless orphans in Palestine. No Muslim in love with God will find peace in his soul when he recalls the ugly scene of occupation soldiers closing off the entry to Al-Aqsa mosque.
Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism and Hinduism have taught the cardinal lesson, down the centuries, that holy places are not to be defiled, that men and women at prayer are not to be told they cannot worship their God. Those who block the path to prayer, those who kick people in prayer, are enemies of God. No follower of God will vandalise temples, churches, synagogues and mosques.
It is these enemies of the Almighty who today cause pain to Palestinians, to other Muslims around the world. In this season of Ramadan, therefore, we cannot afford to be happy or complacent in informing ourselves that we are following the teachings of faith. There is something in the soul which rings a bell every time we sit at prayer. In that ringing of the bell is a message of compassion for those who suffer in Palestine and elsewhere.
The bell rings to inform us that besides Palestinians, besides Muslims, there are the followers of other faiths and other beliefs living through pain in diverse regions of the globe. In Ramadan we remember them. We feel their pain in our cracking hearts. We know they are hungry and thirsty, which is why we will abjure ostentation in our celebrations of Ramadan and when Ramadan is over.
Nothing can be more pleasing to the soul and to God than to suffer in the name of faith. No greater demonstration of faith is there than in being at one with the millions of distressed Afghans who scrounge for food in a land reduced to penury. They have suffered for years at the hands of foreign invaders but have now been forgotten by the world.
We will not know the meaning of pain if we do not, in this noble season of fasting, comprehend the ache in the Rohingyas, people whose homes were put to the torch by a brutal junta and who today eke out a bare existence in Bangladesh, India, Malaysia and Indonesia.
As we sit down to iftar in our God-pleasing humble homes, we will not forget the poor peasant in the village who will not have much to break his fast with. We will stay away from demonstrations of showy piety through not going for iftar parties and sehris, through not posting images of the delicacies we consume as we break the fast at sundown. Gluttony is a sin.
Ramadan is a renewal of faith through a purification of the sensibilities. It has no room for obscenities of any kind. It is obscene to dwell on rich food, on marketing and wearing fashionable clothes. It is obscene when traders force good, honest and humble people to cough up money for goods that will leave them worrying about the next day's meal.
Ramadan is the light of God. Let this light permeate the life of every suffering Palestinian, of every man, woman and child of every faith in agony anywhere on the face of the earth.
Ramadan is that sacred moment when we celebrate the joy of Creation, when holy music flows through the vastness of the universe. Ramadan is that boat which sails down the river, transporting us to shores where the Almighty sits in judgement on us.
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