Quran Gallery Collection
Fasting
4 essays in reading order. Start at part one.
4 essaysRead in order
Fasting Lawful at Night, Forbidden by Day: How Fasting Retrains the Appetites The Qur'an permits the same act at night that it withdraws by day, using one word for both rulings. A hadith aims that identical word at the tongue rather than the body, and another explains why: the fast was never really a rule about the stomach. Food is simply the appetite the day can check. Fasting Fasting Was Never About Hunger: The Purpose the Qur'an Names Fasting is the one act of worship whose purpose is named inside the verse that legislates it: "so that you may attain taqwā." A hadith in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī about false speech shows exactly what it looks like when the outward fast is kept in full and that purpose is missed anyway. Fasting A Month of Practising Restraint: Fasting as Training in Ṣabr A fast has one moving part: refusing something entirely lawful, on a schedule, until refusal itself becomes practised. What the Prophet's instruction for handling an insult while fasting reveals about why that particular drill was chosen, and what proves whether the training actually transferred. Fasting Two Meals That Teach Gratitude: The Blessing in Suḥūr and Ifṭār A sip of water at sunset and a few dates before dawn are unremarkable on any other day of the year. In Ramaḍān, the Sunnah names each of them — blessing on one, a counted joy on the other — and in naming them, teaches what gratitude for something ordinary actually looks like.
