Islam and Ramadan Essay

Ramadan in Britain during the early Eighties, when I was growing up, was very contrary from the way it is now. There was no aw areness of the rotating cal ratiocinationar month of abstinence in the Moslem calendar, no tractability to working hours, no facility for prayer in offices and no calls for prayer on television.For matchless month every year, my family and I would undertake this annual Islamic duty furtively, tip-toeing rough for the pre-dawn meal for fear of waking up the neighbours with the kitchen clatter, and reluctant to talk ab give away the put for fear of censure or mockery.Four decades on, Ramadan is mark far more openly in Britain. any(prenominal) employers are offering flexi-time to those Muslims who, from this week, will undertake a daily fast for 30 consecutive old age that will involve around 19 hours of abstemiousness from all food and drink from sunrise to sunset. several(prenominal) firms are allowing Muslims to begin their working day later , so they can catch up on stillness after waking up at 3am to eat, and to end their shifts earlier, so that they are not working when they are physically weakened.The Eid festival that marks the end of Ramadan is excessively increasingly celebrated in public venues around the country, including Trafalgar Square in London. Channel 4 announced last week that it would broadcast one out of five calls for prayer during the month-long fasting period. The express called it a deliberately provocative act that would, it hoped, argufy prejudices that link Islam to extremism.It is not just Ramadan that has received a PR boost in recent measure entirely fasting itself. In the early geezerhood of fasting at school and then at university I was often warned by wholesome-wishers of the danger I might be putting my body under and that abstaining from eating and drinking water for long hours could do me harm.Now, fasting seems to countenance been reinvented as the ancients saw it a way of giving the body a rest, purifying both physically and spiritually, and a way of sharpening our corporal sense of self-restraint. These objectives are being resurrected in our obesity-riddled westerly world, with its binge culture, its childhood obesity and its addictions to food.Dr Michael Mosleys purview investigation in 2012, which studied the effects of intermittent fasting, and in which he fasted 2 days out of every week (living on 600 calories during his fasting days) spawned the popularity of the 52 diet. Dr Mosley presented medical evidence for the life-extending and life-improving benefits of fasting on the human body, though this is still contentious rule in the scientific and nutritional community.Even grander claims came from American scientists last year who said that fasting for incessant periods could help protect the champion against degenerative illness. Researchers at the National Institute on Ageing in Baltimore found evidence that a severe drop-off of cal orie intake for one or two days a week could protect the brain from the most detrimental effects of Alzheimers and Parkinsons. off from the health benefits, there are ethical reasons for fasting, too, evening for the most irreligious amongst us. Steven Poole, in his book, You Arent What You extinguish Fed Up With Gastroculture, argues compellingly against the recent explosion of bon vivant culture in Britain, in which food has cause a self-indulgent, status-bound and profligate middle-class pastime.Celebrity chefs are now worshipped, he says, and people post pictures of their meals on Facebook. Western civilisation is eating itself stupid, Poole writes. The literary and opthalmic rhetoric of food in our culture has go bad decoupled from any reasonable concern for nutrition or environment.It is nave to think that a few hours of abstinence will harm the majority of the overweight creation in the West, though of course, those with certain ailments such as heart conditions or dia betes should avoid fasting on medical grounds (and are exempt from the engagement of Ramadan). After all, hundreds of thousands of people across the world have access to only one meal at best, and limited water, yet they proceed on.Mohammed Shafiq, founding outgrowth of the Ramadhan Foundation, believes that the persistent hunger and weakness of religious fasting may slow us down but it also increases our compassion for those who have been weakened physically in some way. During Ramadan, you understand how someone feels when they live in a place with no food or water.In this sense, there are gains to be made for the soul and its expanded capacity for empathy. self-control leads us to think about our bodies, their dependencies and their frailties, as well as those of our fellow men and women. And thats not a bad thing.