On Fasting

The Creator says, 'Fasting is Mine'. And by fasting, here, we mean the wider practice of self-denial that is practised during Ramadan, when we deny our lower self – our nafs –the freedom to derive certain sensual pleasures wherever and whenever it desires. Fasting is loved by the Creator more than any other form of worship in Islam.



Unlike the five-times-a-day prayer, the giving of charity and the pilgrimage to Mecca, fasting is an invisible act, a 'passive' worship, if you will. When we fast, we are not actually doing anything at all. It is, for all intents and purposes, a ‘non-action’. And it is practically impossible to make a show of our fasting because it is invisible to everyone but Him. Fasting offers the least opportunity for pride and arrogance. Fasting, then, is for God alone, and in it we actually have no ‘active’ part. This is why He loves fasting more than any other expression of worship. This is why He says, 'Fasting is Mine'. Fasting is unlike any other act of worship, in the same way that the Creator is unlike anything in existence.



Bediuzzaman Said Nursi’s treatise On Ramadan is presented here in its new English translation with a focus on the communication of meaning rather than on strict, word-for-word equivalence, which often obscures what the author is trying to say and makes reading more of a task for the reader than a pleasure.