Ramadan in the face of the "commodification" of man

Ramadan and scorching are derived from the triliteral verb “r m d” which refers to intense heat, or the physical fire that hunger and thirst ignite in the body, causing a spiritual fire to emanate that illuminates the insight, according to the people of mysticism who linked the transparency of the soul to the delicacy of the body, its satiation with its thirst, and its fullness with its hunger, and where the satiation of the soul means the eruption of streams of wisdom, and its fullness means resistance to clay.

The goal is not to satisfy the body’s hunger and thirst, but to strengthen the soul’s resistance, to create a kind of balance between the soul’s food and the body’s food. This is a philosophy that is necessary to confront the tyranny of capitalist philosophy and consumer culture.

When the Jewish writer Leo Bold Weiss, who converted to Islam and called himself Muhammad Asad, visited Cairo, he recorded some observations in his book “The Road to Mecca,” including what he said: “During these days (the days of fasting) the people in the streets of Cairo pulsate with a special sparkle in their eyes, as if they had been raised to a sublime rank for 30 nights.”

In an age of materialism and the philosophy of consumption supported by the fangs of modern technology companies, talking about the soul becomes a kind of farcical talk, because the philosophy of consumption wants domesticated societies that can be directed through their intestines to the destination where instincts are intended to expand to devour what remains of human humanity, so that the ghouls of money can achieve their desire to reduce society to the individual, and reduce the individual to the body, and commodify the body, through a group of instincts that have led man to sanctify triviality, in a world that gasps after fleeting brilliance, and “holy triviality.”

In order not to fall captive to the instinct that we are meant to be molded to satisfy, fasting was a necessity, before it was an obligation in most religions, in order to liberate ourselves from the dominance of instinct, as liberation from its dominance represents the beginning of the path to resisting this frightening falsehood that surrounds the world.

Although he had years of prosperity after expanding his state, he continued to fast from the world, because in order to own the world, you must fast from it, as the great perfect ones are fortunate to live with great meanings, noble values, eternal principles, and firm belief, which are meanings, values, principles, and belief that are not affected by material existence, as time condenses in the historical moment in which it seems that the higher level (the abstract spiritual) is the one that affects the lower level (the tangible material), unlike the materialistic concepts that Karl Marx crystallized in his ideas about the materialistic interpretation of history.

This is the level that changed the course of history with great messages, profound philosophies, immortal cultures and rich literature, the level that Muhammad, peace be upon him, reached when he rejected power and wealth, and went on milking sheep, mending sandals, carrying firewood, tending sheep, tying three stones to his stomach, and giving the poor a cup of milk until they were satisfied, then he drank last, and fasted until the time for breaking the fast came, he ate a few dates, and said: “The thirst has gone, the veins are moistened, and the reward is assured, God willing.” Then he went on to pray the prayer of thanks to God, and this is what we need today: fasting as protection from the greed of the material world, and prayer as a window to the world of the spirit.

*Quoted from Al-Quds Al-Arabi