By Khalid Umar

It is the month of Ramadan, the 9th month in the Islamic calendar.

Muslims all around the world go through a month-long fasting period before Eid. More than 1.8 Billion minds are hooked on a practice that is considered one of the five essential pillars of faith.

FASTING IN ISLAM – VS –  HINDUISM

Fasting is a common practice in Hinduism like in other religions. The main intention behind the Hindu practice of fasting is to purify the mind and body, practice self-control, express gratitude, seek forgiveness, and appease deities. So, to a Hindu mind, the idea of Muslims fasting does not seem an alien concept as many other practices in Islam, till you delve deeply.

Ask any Muslim and he would tell you that Allah made fasting in the month of RAMADAN obligatory in Islam and the first revelations of God also started in this month.

We all have been accepting it without question.

RAMADAN FASTING IS ANOTHER HISTORICAL FALLACY OF ISLAM

No one cared to think in the 1450 years of Islam that the calendar during Muhammad’s lifetime had no month named Ramadan!! It was their 2nd Caliph Omar who in the year 639 AD, after 7 years of Muhammad’s death, introduced a new calendar, taking the migration (hijrah) as the year zero in this calendar.

How Muhammad /Quran could have made fasting obligatory in Ramadan, 16 years before the calendar was even conceived? There can be only one deduction that these verses in Quran about Ramadan were made up long after Muhammad’s death.

30 DAYS OF CONTINUOUS FASTING WAS NOT PRACTICALLY POSSIBLE IN THE DESERT OF ARABIA

Mecca, the holiest Muslim city is the warmest inhabited place on earth, with an average annual temperature of 32 degrees Centigrade. In summer, temperatures reach 50 degrees Centigrade. Medina where Muhammad is buried is not far behind when it comes to summer.

Muslim fasting prohibitions follow Judaism where fasting is defined as total cessation of all food and drink. Jews fast only for 6 days staggered in a year and Islamic doctrine, in competition, made it a month-long suffering!

In Muhmmaden tImes, it could never have been possible to live and work without water for 14 hours a day and a month in succession. It is an afterthought of later days Muslim rulers living in the moderate Mediterranean climates who compiled the Book and made it 30 days of fasting as a piety competition with the Jews.

UNIVERSAL APPLICATION OF PROLONGED WATER-STARVED FASTING DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE.

Spiritual concentration is to maximize your mind and body functions. Water is essential to life. It is crucial to the normal function of the cardiovascular system as it makes about 70 percent of body weight & the effects of dehydration occur with as little water loss as 1% of body weight and become life-threatening at 10%. The brain cannot function without water. Such extreme measures must not be applied mandatory & madly on the whole society.

REAL ‘SPIRITUAL FACE’ OF RAMADAN – A KILLING MACHINE

Muslim societies become totally dysfunctional during this one month. Taking the example of Pakistan, work screeches to a halt. All inefficiency is blamed on fasting. Food intake triples; prices soar. It becomes a month of profiteering, hoarding by the traders, bribery by the officials, overspending by the affluent, and suffering by the masses. In Pakistan, eating in the daytime during the Ramadan period is a Police cognizable criminal offence.

HEALTH HAZARDS

Such mindless enforced fasting is a huge health hazard. Every year thousands of diabetic patients die attempting to fast due to their ‘spiritual zest’. Irritability, headaches, sleep deprivation, and lack of energy becomes normal symptoms in society.

IMAGINE YOU ARE FASTING!!

Filling your stomach with solid food and liquids starts 1-2 hours before sunrise. Your stomach becomes a bloated sack of food at dawn. The whole day in heat and humidity ends with scavenging food madly after 12-14 hours of break. A high-caloric diet, dehydration, hormonal imbalance, disturbed circadian rhythms, and elevated sugar makes it a bounty month of hospital revenue. In temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Centigrade, the average human body loses up to 1.5-2 Kg of water weight an hour as sweat. In 4-5 hours, you may lose enough water to die of dehydration. That is why the faithful, fill their stomach like balloons with water and then stay inactive, indoors hibernating, waiting for dusk.

Where is that proclaimed piety, self-restraint, etc.?

In Europe, the fasting period becomes up to 16 hours in the summer months. Blind following of a pirated and plagiarised book as the Divine commandments with 30 days of fasting, with no water during the fasting hours, by devout Muslims especially of the subcontinent is a yearly malaise that sucks their health, money, and happiness.

Verily, Muslims are the largest unfortunate victims of their religion; fodder of thoughtless actions.

This article was published in Bharat Voice.