Why people fast

This lesson asks you to explain why people adopt various eating patterns. The museum offers one pattern, the Ramadan fast, with the reasons two speakers give for it; your class adds the patterns it studies, such as vegetarian or local-food diets. The reasons are those of religious teachers, not nutritional or health advice, and the linked record also holds a ruling on fasting for diabetics, which is the history of a ruling and not medical guidance. ¹

Read each speaker's reason on its own. Ask whether the reason is about the body, the will or devotion, and who says it, before you compare it with the reasons people give for other eating patterns.

Read two reasons for fasting as the Encyclopaedia of Islam reports them from al-Ghazali. In the record of fasting in Ramadan the article says that at the start of his Kitab Asrar al-sawm in the Ihya, al-Ghazali offers reflections on the value of fasting ². It gives two of his reasons: fasting is a passive act that no one sees except God, and it is a means of resisting Satan, whose instruments are the human passions that eating and drinking stimulate ². Fasting is therefore, in his words, the gateway to the service of God ². The article closes by remarking that it is a very widespread opinion today that fasting, especially in Ramadan, is the most fitting expiation for offences committed during the year ². These are the words of one named author and one article about why people fast; they are not a survey of what those who fast say.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam gives two accounts of where the Ramadan fast comes from. The first is the Muslim tradition as the article reports it: according to reliable Muslim tradition, the article says, a revelation in the year 2/623-4 ended the obligation of the fast of Ashura by instituting the fast of Ramadan ³. The article adds that opinions differ on why this month was chosen, and finds most plausible the view of A. J. Wensinck, who drew attention to the particularly sacred character of Ramadan even before Islam, on account of the night of power ³. The second is its own academic account of the word: it says the sense of fasting was taken from Judaeo-Aramaic and Syriac usage once Muhammad became better acquainted with the institution in Medina ³, and it does not assume that fasting was unknown in Mecca before his time ³. The museum labels each account and gives no verdict.

For the law of fasting the article follows a treatise of the fifth Islamic century, and the museum's record reports it as the article does ³. The article itself says opinions differ on why this month was chosen ³, and calls its remark about expiation a very widespread opinion ², without saying how many hold it. Al-Ghazali's two reasons reach us through the article's summary. This page stops at what the article reports and does not draw on the recorded talks by preachers that the record also holds.

The record offers two kinds of answer: two reasons the article gives for al-Ghazali ², and an account of the fast's origin from an academic encyclopaedia ³. What can each source say about why people fast today, what can neither say, and why?

• Fasting in Ramadan: the Shafi'i law of fasting, its relaxations, al-Ghazali's three steps and what the article says of the origin.
• Ramadan: what the Kuwaiti encyclopaedia says distinguishes the month.
• Ihya ulum al-din: the book in which al-Ghazali treats fasting among the acts of worship.
• Ashura: the day whose fast, the article says, stopped being obligatory when the fast of Ramadan was instituted.

Read fasting in Ramadan, and find only the two passages from Yusuf al-Qaradawi and from al-Sha'rawi. Write each speaker's reason in one sentence, then write one reason people give for another eating pattern your class has studied.