I can't complain and I shouldn't. There are many people who fast for many more hours in the day than I do. It's just part of a combination of things that are going on for me at the moment; including the stress of changing jobs, and the general exhaustion of recovering from my knee surgery.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Kind of. If there's a medical reason for me to break my fast, I can do so. Then, I have to make up the missed day after I recover, or whatever. Frankly, I don't want to do that. I want to get to the end of Ramadan without "owing days", or whatever.
Anyway, in New Zealand, today is the 24th of Ramadan, and my surgery was two days before the start of Ramadan. So I have made it this far OK. It would seem a terrible cop-out to suddenly start using it as an excuse for not fasting.
There are many reasons. Probably the most practical reason, from a non-religious point of view, is that it teaches us what it is like to be hungry and thirsty, day after day; and we learn empathy with those who are less fortunate.
There are also health benefits of fasting (you can google this).
Another view on it is that God is testing our dedication to Him, and giving us an opportunity to earn rewards for that dedication.
In the 9 months or so between the time I converted to Islam, and the start of the current Ramadan, I fasted for a total of three days, but not consecutive ones.
@JohanLarsson Some Christians fast occasionally. But if I understand it correctly, they can still drink water when they fast; all they forgo is food.
When Muslims fast, we go without food, water and sex. The thirst is worse than the hunger.
I meant why is Ramadan a month of fasting? But if it is a commemoration of the gift of the Qur'an, then I suppose it is to be like the Prophet. He was fasting when he received the word, right? Or am I off-base here?
@KitFox I don't know whether the Prophet (God's blessings and peace be upon him) was fasting whenever he received the Qur'an. I don't think so. Maybe someone else can provide a better answer to this than I can. But it's a month of fasting because the Qur'an specifically says that it is.
But I meant it about it being sensible. If it's because God said so, that makes a lot more sense to me than "because Jesus was born under a tree that people put presents on" or some weird thing.
Not about the fasting, but about the things that are symbols of the celebration.
Sure. We follow God's commandments BECAUSE they are God's commandments. Often, we realise later why a specific commandment is a good idea. Sometimes we never know.
Kit, I haven't been a Muslim for very long. I am not the best person to answer detailed questions about what Muslims do or why. Often, the best I'll be able to say is "God knows best". If you DO want answers to some of these questions though, I can find out for you. Or you could ask one of the other Muslims who come here sometimes.
What I mean by my "least satisfying" remark is that a religion just seems like a cult, if the people blindly follow the words of their leader (whether they see him/her as a prophet, or whether they see those words as the word of God, or whatever). But the thing about Islam is that there are good and practical reasons for the commandments. Like, a non-Muslim could do well from following some of the rules of Islam, without ever believing in God.
Imagine how much nicer the world would be if nobody drank alcohol, or consumed narcotics, or gambled.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I was relying (and this was silly of me) on Firefox's default dictionary, which dislikes idiomaticity but accepts idiomaticness. However, Firefox's default dictionary doesn't accept Firefox, so perhaps I should pay it less heed.
OK, so think about an animal like a cow or sheep, that eats almost entirely grass, and takes an entire day to digest it. What's going into its blood stream is pretty pure, so its meat is quite clean.
@KitFox I don't see a fundamental problem with gambling. Now, I've never gambled in my life, except for buying a line of tickets during the interval at a amateur dramatics show occasionally.
Compare that with a pig, that eats rubbish and food scraps, and digests it very quickly. Like in 3 or 4 hours. Its blood stream is largely made up of trash. Do you want to eat that? I don't!
I suspect the prohibition of eating pork is based on superstition. But my friend claims to have seen a documentary where they discussed how in the bronze age it was extremely difficult to farm and eat pork in hot climates due to meat spoilage. More difficult than other animals.
@TRiG Evidence does exist, but you're right about it being post hoc. I avoid pig meat because God commands me to avoid pig meat. The fact that it might be a good thing from a health point of view is, well, a good thing. But God knows best what the reason for the commandment is.
@DavidWallace See? Good reasoning there. Let's not bullshit about it. It's in the Rules, and you obey the Rules. No need to justify that. That's respectable.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 The prayer room that I visit most often is in an office building, and shares a kitchen with other offices. Often, somebody cooks bacon in the kitchen. The smell pervades the prayer room. It's trying for everyone there; even if I'm the only Muslim there who actually knows what the smell is.
@TRiG My better half and I signed up for a half share in a CSA this summer and that makes it easy, because we're up to our ears in vegetables. We usually have one meat dish a week at home.
@DavidWallace The taboo on pork in that part of the world long predates the hypothesised date of the Exodus. (This is one of the many lines of evidence which strongly suggests the Exodus never happened.)
@Cerberus Because of other tribes in the region that practised human sacrifice, or routinely attacked and burned people to death.
> That means if pigs were kosher, Israelite worshippers would have smelled something eerily similar to the smell that emanated from pagan places of worship—if, as the Hebrew Bible claims, human child sacrifice was indeed practiced by the Israelites’ neighbors—and the Israelite priests would also have been seen consuming meat that bore a disturbing resemblance to those horrific pagan sacrifices.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Look, there can be all sorts of factors, but a single utilitarian factor cannot have been the main drive behind it if you consider how they kept it for so many millennia.
@DavidWallace Well, I don't believe in God, and operate under the principle that religious rules have secular underpinnings. Also, I'd like to believe that if there were a god, he wouldn't just make up random rules.
@Cerberus Sure it could. A single utilitarian factor could easily lead to a religious rule being created. A generation later, the utilitarian factor is forgotten, but the religious rule has the force of God's Law.
I've found the following picture online. It is about the moral/paradigm behind consistent behavior.
Click to enlarge.
The image text says
A group of scientists placed 5 monkeys in a cage and in the middle, a ladder with bananas on the top.
Every time a monkey went up the ladder, the...
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I'm not an expert on religion by any means, but I think any source that refers to the Torah as the "Hebrew Bible" is maybe not the best source on Jewish tradition.
Empirically, there doesn't seem to be any problem with eating pig, at least not compared to any other kind of meat. It's been eaten for generations and generations without problem. So obviously the main reason today for its non-kosher status is that it is simply a religious rule.
@WendiKidd The Torah is not the Hebrew Bible. The Torah is part of the Hebrew Bible. The full Hebrew Bible is the Tanakh. (Please disregard that some of the Tanakh is written in Aramaic.)
I've found the following picture online. It is about the moral/paradigm behind consistent behavior.
Click to enlarge.
The image text says
A group of scientists placed 5 monkeys in a cage and in the middle, a ladder with bananas on the top.
Every time a monkey went up the ladder, the...
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…