Fasting

The latest blog is about fasting in Ramadan, as outlined in 2:183-189.

I've fasted. Not for religious reasons, obviously, but I've done 24 hour fasts. When your belly is empty, your mind is sharper, perhaps as an evolutionary adaptation, which seems to account for the general religious interest in the subject. A physical sensation, the ability to synthesise meaningful experiences in your mind, and you're away.

I'm with Sam Harris on this, if not on everything. It's important, and feasible, to bring the rational mind to an analysis of hyperconscious states, and the only real way in is to experience them for yourself. Any returns will obviously be compromised by the impossibility of excluding the placebo effect, but that doesn't mean that the attempt shouldn't be made, just that any results shouldn't be allowed to override other results derived more vigorously.

Muslims only fast during daylight, but they do it for a month. Because Ramadan is tied to the cycles of the moon rather than the sun, it can fall at any time of the year, so Muslims in Britain might be required to fast for ten hours a day in the freezing winter while we all celebrate Christmas, as happened to the Muslims where I live a couple of years ago, or to go without drink or food for eighteen hours on a baking hot June day.

Now here's a conundrum. How do Muslims manage in the Arctic Circle? There are for instance many Somali communities in Scandinavia. If Ramadan falls in winter, it must pass them by almost entirely, whereas summer Ramadan could go on for weeks.

If you know, add a comment. I'm not taking the piss, I'm genuinely curious.

I'm reduced to general enquiries because of the paucity of any actual claims to pick apart. Credit where credit's due, though. We get through an entire week without the Qur'an feeling the need to threaten anybody. There is one passing reference to the virtue of fearing Allah, but no graphic descriptions of the consequences of not doing so at all. It may only be seven verses, but still.

One slight caveat. Verse 187. Which begins, Permitted to you, on the night of the fasts, is the approach to your wives. All very generous and everything, but like so many passages in the Qur'an it's written from the male point of view. If the book was written with gender equality in mind, as Sardar keeps claiming, it could so easily have said approach to your wives and husbands. But it doesn't, and as in so many cases it's clear who the intended audience is.