Why do we fast?

The purpose of fasting is ultimately to strengthen our consciousness of God: “O you who have attained to faith, it is prescribed upon you fasting, as it was prescribed upon those before you, so that you may strengthen your consciousness (to God)” (2:183).

To strengthen one’s consciousness of God means to strengthen his (or her) faith and loyalty to Him, as the chosen ones amongst God’s creation. Chosen to be God’s vicegerent, the master and the responsible in this big but limited world. Afterwards, everyone will be questioned and judged by God on his conduct, on Resurrection Day.

In any day of the year, one may fast voluntarily (except in the day of ‘ied-al-fitr and the day of ‘ied-al-Ad-ha), but it is obligatory for Muslims to fast during the days of the holy month of Ramadan. That is because this specific month is a really great month: “The month of Ramadan, wherein the Qur’an was revealed, a guidance for mankind, and as clear proofs of the Guidance and the Criterion …” (2:185).

The month of Ramadan is a great event for Muslims and an excellent opportunity to get more spiritual energy and is an occasion for purification. The Prophet Muhammad (God’s blessings upon him) allegorically expressed this occasion as follows: “When Ramadan begins, the gates of Paradise are opened, the gates of Hell are closed, and the devils are chained” (Reported by Abu Hurairah, recorded by Al-Bukhari and Muslim in their collections of Hadith).

“Paradise” is an expression of God’s great mercy for His devoted servants who follow His Guidance and apply His ordinances. “Hell” is an expression of anger or wrath of God. So the month of Ramadan is, for faithful Muslims, a month in which God is granting them more opportunities to receive plenty of mercy and more chances to obtain His forgiveness. For those who take this occasion seriously, all their sincere devotions to God will surely purify them spiritually and supply them with God’s guidance.

As God says in the Qur’an: “And those who are (willing to be) guided, He increases their (ability to follow His) guidance and causes them to grow in God-consciousness” (47:17).

Abu Hurairah reported that the Prophet (God’s blessings upon him) said: “Whoever fasts during Ramadan with faith and seeking God’s reward, all his past sins will be forgiven. And whoever prays (taraweeh) during the nights of Ramadan with faith and seeking God’s reward, all his past sins will be forgiven. And whoever passes lailatulqadr (special night of Al-Qadr in one of last ten nights of the month of Ramadan) in prayer with faith and seeking reward from God, all his past sins will be forgiven”  (Recorded by AlBukhari in his Collection of Hadith).

The Messenger of God often related spiritual realities which could not be seen or heard by ordinary people, for example:

That in the first night of Ramadan there is a caller (maybe an angel) who calls: O seeker of the good, come near! And: o seeker of evil, stop! And every night of this month, there will be people to be freed from Fire!” (Reported by Abu Hurairah, recorded by At-Tirmidhi in his Collection of Hadith). 

From the physical perspective, fasting begins from the first light of dawn and lasts till sunset, which implies abstaining from food, drink and sexual relations. From the moral and behavioral perspective, one must be more careful than usual in abstaining from lying, malicious gossip, quarrelling and trivial nonsense during the whole month.

Exempted from the fast are the very old and the insane. Those who are sick, the elderly or those on a journey and women who are menstruating, pregnant or nursing are permitted to break the fast, but must make up an equal number of days later in the year. If physically unable to do so, they must feed a needy person for each missed day. Children begin to fast (and to observe the prayers) from puberty, although they are to be trained earlier.

Fasting during the month of Ramadan has many moral benefits: developing individual strength in character and one’s maturity. It also gives one an opportunity to think deeply about his (or her) behavior and conduct, so that one can correct his mistakes and restart his life with purer and fresher spirit to face all issues in life.

It is recommended for Muslims to always be generous and to be more generous in Ramadan, as the Prophet Muhammad (God’s blessings upon him) used to be so.

Ibn Abbas reported that the Messenger of God (God’s blessings upon him) was the most generous of people in charity, but he was generous to the utmost in the month of Ramadan” (Muslim in his Collection of Hadith).

Of course fasting in Ramadan is an obligatory devotion for the faithful Muslim, yet it gives physical benefits as well, as Dr Razeen Mahroof, an anesthetist from Oxford said: “Ramadan isn’t always thought of as being an opportunity to lose weight, because the spiritual aspect is emphasized more than the health aspect, however, it’s a great chance to get the physical benefits as well” (www.nhs.uk).

Andalusia (Part II)

The decline

Every calamity is a consequence of people’s deeds. So when Muslims in North Africa in 711 CE moved to help the oppressed people in Spain, motivated by God’s call and obeying His command, God helped them to reach excellent achievement. But when they lost that lofty faith, and their behaviour declined, they no more deserved God’s help. 

God says: “O you who have attained to faith! If you help (the cause of) God, He will help you and will make firm your steps” (47:7). “ ... victory comes only from God, the Mighty, the Wise “ (3:126).

And if we look at History, we can also see that the problems started when the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyad dynasty in Damascus and made their capital in Baghdad (in 750 CE).  Shortly thereafter came the disintegration. A young surviving Umayyad prince named Abd-ar-Rahman Ad-Dakhil came to Spain in 756 and fought against the ruler (Yusuf Al-Fihri) until he defeated him and ruled in his place. The Abbasids then sent a band of soldiers to kill him but failed. They were defeated and Abd-ar-Rahman declared Andalus independent of Baghdad.

This new ruler of Andalusia faced many parties of enemy: The Abbasids who wanted to take revenge; King Charlemagne, who became the master of Europe, and some governors who wanted to be independent.

For Muslims, the spirit or the moral strength could only be held by two principles: paying heed to God and His Messenger, and being united among themselves. God says: “And obey God and His Messenger, and do not quarrel with one another, lest you falter and your strength fades; and be patient, surely God is with the patient” (8:46).

Muslim expulsion

According to the historian Roger Boase (published in “History Today” Vol. 52, issue 4, 2002): “In December 1248 Seville fell to Ferdinand III of Castile (1199-1252), as well as many other cities, including Valencia, Murcia, Jaen and Cordoba. All had been captured and it seemed that the end of Muslim Spain was imminent. However, it was not until 1492 that the Moorish Kingdom of Granada surrendered to Ferdinand V and Isabella, and the final Muslim expulsion did not take place until over a century later, between 1609 and 1614. This means that there was a large Moorish population in Spain that held a millennium after the high point of Andalusian culture in the eleventh century.

The fall of Granada is the time of the expulsion where many atrocities were committed: homes were destroyed and abandoned, mosques were converted into churches, mothers were separated from their children, people were stripped of their wealth and humiliated, armed rebels were reduced to slavery”.                            

The Abbasids formed an alliance with the French kings and warlords who were fighting Muslim Andalus from the north. The Andalusians, in turn, allied with the Byzantine Empire who were defending their falling empire against invading Muslims because they consider Muslims as pagans and heretics who had to be destroyed. The degradation continued and the succession struggle became so bitter that the empire fell into pieces of city-states. It became easy for the invading French to do their work.

The inquisition

By the seventeenth century the Moors had become Spanish citizens, of whom some were genuine Christian converts. Yet all were the victims of a state policy based on racist theological arguments, which had the backing of both the Royal Council and the Church, for which the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 provided an immediate legal precedent.

According to the terms of the treaty drawn up in 1492, the new subjects of the Crown were to be allowed to preserve their mosques and religious institutions, to retain the use of their language and to continue to abide by their own laws and customs. But within seven years these terms had been broken.

When the moderate missionary approach of the archbishop of Granada, Hernando de Talavera (1428-1507), was replaced by the fanaticism of Cardinal Cisneros (1436-1518), who organized mass conversions and the burning of all religious texts in Arabic, these events resulted in the first Rebellion of the Alpujaras (1499-1500) and the assassination of one of the Cardinal’s agents. This in turn gave the Catholic monarchs an excuse to revoke their promises. In 1499 the Muslim religious leaders of Granada were persuaded to hand over more than 5,000 priceless books with ornamental bindings, which were then consigned to the flames; only some books on medicine were spared.

In Andalusia after 1502, and in Valencia, Catalonia and Aragon after 1526, the Moors were given a choice between baptism and exile. For the majority, baptism was the only practical option. Henceforward the Spanish Moors became theoretically New Christians and, as such, subject to the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, which had been authorised by Pope Sixtus IV in 1478.

In Roman Catholic Church history, inquisition was a judicial institution (1232-1820) founded to discover and suppress any opinion or belief that is or is thought to be contrary to official, which they call it heresy. In the Muslim Kingdom of Andalusia (711-1492) there was no such thing. All different religious communities recognized by the authority. The Qur’an says: “There shall be no coercion in matters of faith. The correct way has become distinct from the erroneous; so whoever disbelieves in the false deity, and believes in God, has laid hold of the most firm handle, unbreaking; God is Hearing, Knowing” (2:256).

Coercion is incompatible with faith, because faith depends on comprehension and will, and these would be meaningless if induced by force. God observes and knows each one. Human authority has only the right to observe and maintain the cooperation of the all inhabitants and should try to spread tolerance among all different communities.

But the calamity that inflicted the Muslims of Andalusia, was caused partly because they became less attached to their faith and loyalty to God, and little by little lost their solidarity among themselves, while facing very fierce enemies.

In this context, an Andalusian poet, Abu-al-Baqa’ Ar-Rundy described the calamity in his famous poem written in Arabic and translated by James T. Monroe as follows:

Everything declines after reaching perfection; therefore

          let no man be beguiled by the sweetness of a

          pleasant life.

As you have observed, these are the decrees that are

         inconstant: he whom a single moment has made

         happy, has been harmed by many other moments.

And this is the abode that will show a pity for no man;

         nor will any condition remain in its state for it.

For the accidents (of fortune) there is a consolation that

        makes them easy to bear, yet there is no consolation

        for what has befallen Islam.

An event which cannot be endured has overtaken the

        peninsula; one such that Uhud has collapsed because

        of it and Thahlan has crumbled.

The evil eye has struck (the peninsula) in its Islam so

        that (the land) decreased until whole regions and

        districts were despoiled of (the faith).

Therefore ask Valencia what is the state of Murcia, and

        where is Jativa, and where is Jaen?

Where is Cordoba, the home of the sciences, and many

        a scholar whose rank was once lofty in it?

Where is Seville and the pleasures it contains, as well as

         its sweet river overflowing and brimming full?

(They are) capitals which were the pillars of the land,

         yet when the pillars are gone, it may no longer

         endure!

The tap of the white ablution fount weeps in despair,

        like a passionate lover weeping at the departure of

        the beloved.

Over dwellings emptied of Islam that were first vacated

        and are now inhabited by unbelief;

In which the mosques have become churches wherein

        only bells and crosses may be found.

O, who will redress the humiliation of a people who were

         once powerful, a people whose condition injustice

          and tyrants have changed?

Yesterday they were kings in their own homes, but today

          they are slaves in the land of the infidel!

Thus, were you to see them perplexed, with no one to

           guide them, wearing the cloth of shame in its

           different shades.

And were you to behold their weeping when they are

           sold,  the matter would strike fear into your heart,

            and sorrow would seize you.

Alas, many a mother and child have been parted as souls

           and bodies are separated!

And many a maiden fair as the sun when it rises, as

           though she were rubies and pearls

is led off to abomination by a barbarian against her will,

           while her eye is in tears and her heart is stunned.

The heart melts with sorrow at such (sights), if there is

           any Islam or belief in that heart!

Andalusia (Part I)

The Iberian Peninsula

Andalusia was the name used by the Muslim population of the Iberian Peninsula for the territory that was under Muslim rule from 711 CE until the fall of Granada in 1492 CE.

Historians recorded that in the early 5^th century, Germanic tribes invaded the peninsula, namely the Suebi, the Vandals and their allies, the Sermatian Alans. All of them created several kingdoms, but only the Kingdom of Suebi endured after the arrival of another wave of Germanic invaders, the Visigoths, who conquered all of the Iberian Peninsula and expelled or partially integrated the Vandals, and the Alans. After that the Visigoths conquered the Suebi kingdom in 584.

In the late fourth and early fifth centuries they became federates of the Western Roman Empire, and in 410 Alaric led the Visigoths in an attack on the city of Rome. They declared independence and established a Gothic state with Toledo as its capital. The Visigoths’ religion was Arianism, while the original people of Andalusia were Catholic Canaanites. They were subject to the Gothic rule and were tolerant towards them. During his reign (586-601) Reccard declared his conversion to Catholicism in 589.

 “Arianism is a belief declared by the Alexandrian presbyter Arius (258-376). It affirmed that Christ is not truly divine but a created being. The fundamental premise of Arius was the uniqueness of God, who is alone self-existent and immutable. Christ, who is not self-existent, cannot be God” (Encyclopedia Britannica).

When the emperors Gratian (367-383) and Theodosius I (379-395) took up the defense of orthodoxy (Catholicism), Arianism collapsed. In 381 when the second Ecumenical Council met at Constantinople, Arianism was proscribed and the Nicene Creed was approved. Yet Arianism continued among some of the Germanic tribes, especially in the Iberian Peninsula to the end of the 7^th century.

Why conquering Andalusia

Before the Islamic rule, four classes in conflict constituted the population of Andalusia: (1) The ruling colonialist class of Goths; (2) The Roman elite (the feudal lords and clergymen); (3) The Jews and (4) The indigenous working class. That conflict caused domination, oppression and persecution against the lower class, the indigenous.

The Visigoths occupied the country for about three centuries, however, as related by Prof. Husayn Mu’nis in his book “Fajr-al-Andalus” (I quote from www.islamqa.info): “…their authority was not well established in the land at first, because of the religious conflicts that occurred between them and the original people, and because of the disputes that occurred among their rulers. Hence, throughout the sixth century the land was subjected to civil wars, chaos and problems that resulted from them, until the time of the last Visigoth ruler whose name was Roderic.”

"What is clear and indisputable is that Roderic felt that he was not fully in control and all his life he feared an attack from his many enemies. These enemies were not only the sons of Wittiza, whose kingdom Roderic had usurped, rather they included most of the Iberian, Roman and Jewish people, i.e., most of the people of the land, which the Goths had invaded”.

Prof. Husayn Mu’nis mentions that the local people rejected Gothic rule. He quoted Rafael Balasteros, the Spanish historian, as saying: “If the Arabs had not interfered in the Peninsula’s affairs in 711 CE and put an end to this age of turmoil, the Goths would have inflicted unimaginable harm on Spain”.

So the population of Andalusia, due to the Goths’s oppression, sent word to the Muslims in North Africa, asking them to help and save them. Julian, the ruler of Ceutah sent word to Moosa bin Nusayr (governor of the Umayads) asking him for help against the one who had usurped his father’s kingdom. The Jews who were being persecuted by the Goths also sought help from Muslims in North Africa to save them from the oppression of Roderic.

Before the military action, Moosa bin Nusayr asked permission from the Khalifa in Damascus. The Khalifa asked him to be cautious, “send first a military detachment to know the situation at place”. Only then, in 711 Muslim military entered Spain under the leadership of Tariq bin Ziyad with the help of the ruler of Ceutah. That military action could really be called jihad, because they were invited by an oppressed people, and because they did it to liberate the oppressed from the atrocity they were subjected to. Jihad is not terror as usually described by the media nowadays. Jihad is the action of liberation against the oppressors, as we find in the text of the Qur’an: « What is wrong with you, that you do not fight in the way of God, and for the oppressed men, women, and children who say: Our Lord, bring us forth from this town whose people are evildoers and appoint for us a protector from You, and appoint for us from You a helper” (4:75).

Muslims came to Andalusia with four purposes, motivated by their faithful devotion to God:

1.    Establishing Human freedom; the Qur’an says: “O mankind! We have indeed created you from a male and a female, and made you nations and tribes that you may come to know each other. Truly the noblest of you in the sight of God is the most God-conscious among you. Truly, God is all-Knowing, all-Aware” (49:13).

2.    Respecting God’s ordinances; the Qur’an says: “Follow what has been revealed to you from your Lord, and do not follow beside Him any masters. Little do you remember” (7:3).

3.    Establishing Social justice; the Qur’an says: O you who have attained to faith! Be upright in justice; witnesses for God, even though it be against yourselves, or parents and kinsmen, whether the person be rich or poor; God is better caretaker of both. So do not follow any whim, lest you swerve, for if you twist or refrain, surely God is ever aware of what you do” (4:135).

4.    Promoting skills to enrich the country, because they believed that God has given them opportunities to exploit all what is on earth, in the skies and around it to be of use to them and to fulfil their needs in life as easily as possible, as the Qur’an says: “And He (God) has disposed for you whatever is in the heavens, and whatever is in the earth; all being from Him. Surely in that there are signs for a people who reflect”

(45:13). “It is He (God) Who made the earth tractable for you, so walk in its flanks and eat of His provision; and to Him is the resurrection” (67:15).

Europe’s benefit

According to Juan Vernet in his book “The Art of Islamic Spain” (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Abrams, 1992),

“Muslims entered Spain not as aggressors, but as liberators. In this multicultural society, many Jews and Christians held government positions”.

“Throughout the period of Islamic rule, Al-Andalus was a remarkable example and outstanding model of tolerance”

(Benchrifa, Mohamed: “The Routes of al-Andalus” http://mirror-us.

Unesco.org/culture/al-andalus/html_eng/andalus2.htm).

“When Muslims first arrived in Spain in 711 CE, they were mainly composed of Arabs and Berbers from North Africa. Within two decades a majority of the inhabitants of Andalusia, especially most of the Unitarian Christians and the oppressed class, accepted Islam freely in recognition of the peace, security and the freedom of religion and expression under the Muslim rule. They intermarried within various ethnic groups including the native Spanish-Muslim population, with the result that Spain became a fairly homogeneous country within a few generations” (Dr. A. Zohoor).

“At a time when even kings could not read or write, a Moorish king had a private library of six hundred thousand books. At a time when ninety-nine percent of the Christian people were wholly illiterate, the Moorish city of Cordova had eight hundred public schools, and there was not a village within the limits of the empire where the blessings of education could not be enjoyed by the children of the most indigent peasant and it was difficult to encounter even a Moorish peasant who could not read and write” (S. P. Scott in “The History of the Moorish Empire in Europe” quoted from: www.cyberistan.org/islamic/quote3.html).

Muslim civilization

Andalusia was the main route of Islamic civilization and the most important bridge through which Islamic civilization moved to whole Europe and had an impact on various scientific, intellectual, social and economical fields.

Andalusia remained for eight centuries (711-1492) a radiating beacon of civilization, even when it was politically weak, when a part of the kingdom was overthrown. In fact, during those centuries in Spain, Muslim rulers have almost never been in peace. There was disintegration within them. Some of them made alliances with neighbouring enemies against one another, but scientists, philosophers and lawyers all continued in their researches and works. They achieved a lot of success for the benefit of the renaissance in Europe and ultimately the whole world.

Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931), a French scholar recorded: “No sooner had the Arabs completed the conquest of Spain than they started to carry out the message of civilization there. In less than a century, they managed to give life to dead lands, reconstruct ruined cities, set up magnificent buildings, and strengthen close trade relation with other nations. They then started to dedicate themselves to studying sciences and arts and to translate Greek and Latin books and set up universities which continued to be a place for culture in Europe for a long time” (G. Le Bon: “Civilization of Arabs”, quoted from: islamstory.com).

To be continued…