“The most blessed month of Ramadan is designed to completely reshape human life and character. During the blessed month of Ramadan, our habits of eating, drinking, sleeping, conjugal intimacy, all undergo profound transformation.
After day-long deprivation of food, drink and sex, Ramadan imposes upon the Believers long hours of night prayers, chants, meditations and Qur’an reading. Lying and cheating, quarrelling and fighting, gossip and backbiting, always anathema to Islam, are now treated as absolute abominations.
And this goes on day after day and night after night for one whole month.
And for all of this time, the only one who really monitors your thought, speech and behaviour closely is you and your God. No one else does or can. A more comprehensive or rigorous regime for the complete reshaping of the human body, mind, soul and spirit is hard to imagine.
It would be hardly surprising if at the end of the month of Ramadan a human being emerges with a completely new and vigorous attitude to life and its challenges – and with a brand new character to successfully deal with them.
There is no better system on earth for creating character or for reforming and redirecting human life. And that is exactly what the Qur’an says Siyaam or Fasting came into this world to do: To teach us Taqwa, the highest form of character, rooted in the fear and love of God and in the love and service of humanity. To make new human beings out of us.
A Taqwa-based character, when fully and properly formed, makes it possible for human beings to do their duty, and to do the right thing, at all times and in all situations, regardless of whether they are in a public place or in the privacy of their home.
It teaches human beings how to hold themselves accountable before God, and before their own conscience right here in this world, for their actions as well as for the outcomes and consequences they intended or expected from their actions.
Because their character has now been perfectly recalibrated and their spirit has now been fully charged and reinvigorated by the month-long physical, mental and spiritual drill of Ramadan during which God himself presided over their character training and over their physical and spiritual rejuvenation and remaking.” (Dr. Pasha)
