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Triumph of the Irrational

Five Perplexing Pillars  - Ramadan

Ramadan is more immersion into the Koran. During the month most participants will have reread the book for the umpteenth time from cover to cover.

Reading and repeating the same thing over and over again is a technique associated with brainwashing and may explain why Muhammad used to wait until the feast of Id-ul-fitr (also spelled Eid al-Fitr), which marks the end of Ramadan⁠—and Id-ul-Adha (also spelled Eid-ul-Adha), which is celebrated on the final day of the Hajj—with his followers more convinced than ever of the need to rid the world of unbelievers, to give his army its marching orders.

 Narrated Abu Sa'id Al-Khudri:

The Prophet used to proceed to the Musalla (open space outside a mosque that is mainly used for praying,) on the days of Id-ul-fitr and Id-ul-Adha; the first thing to begin with was the prayer and after that he would stand in front of the people and the people would keep sitting in their rows. Then he would preach to them, advise them and give them orders, (i.e. Khutba). And after that if he wished to send an army for an expedition, he would do so.

Bukhari 15.76

Ramadan’s weirdness is not in its massive indoctrination exercise but in having been seemingly inspired by local conditions. It is as if God’s knowledge of his surrounding, traditions and how the world works did not exceed that of the illiterate who spoke on His behalf.

Take for instance Allah’s insistence on the primitive, inaccurate lunar calendar his spokesman favoured. Somewhere in the world believers are freezing during The Month of Great Heat, or seeking shelter from torrential rains during The First Dry Month, and perhaps The Second Dry Month.

1 The Sacred Month

2 The Month of Travelling

3 The First Spring

4 The Second Spring

5 The First Dry Month

6 The Second Dry Month

7 The Month of Respect

8 The Dividing Month

9 The Month of Great Heat

10 The Month of Hunting

11 The Month of Rest

12 The Month of Pilgrimage

It is not just the names of the months that reflect local weather conditions and traditions that invite skepticism, but the fact that each month begins eleven or ten days earlier every year, This makes it difficult for believers at latitudes below and above that of Mecca and Medina, during some years, to correctly observe the Month of Great Heat from which we get the name Ramadan. 

The Islamic calendar is based on a lunar cycle of twelve months of 29 or 30 days, depending on the visibility of the moon, making the Islamic year 354 or 355 days long not taking into consideration leap years. Why God chose the ever imprecise lunar calendar over the more accurate solar calendar, such as the one introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 B.C., instead of educating His unschooled spokesman as to the superiority of the later is a mystery. Unlike the lunar calendar, the Julian calendar neatly divides a 365-day year into 12 months and adds a leap day to February every four years. .

The first solar calendar was probably developed by the Egyptians who, as a settled agrarian civilization, needed an accurate way of determining the end of one season and the beginning of another. Being able to accurately determine the best time to plant your crops would not have been an issue for the desert dwellers of the arid Arabian Peninsula whose main occupation was trade and the raising of livestock; mainly sheep, goats, camels and some cattle.

By His parochial catering to Muhammad's desert dwellers, Allah made it difficult, if not impossible, for many believers to observe Ramadan the way He wants them to. Could His affection for a time when His Magnificence was associated with the Moon have blinded Him to the impact on believers of choosing the traverse of that celestial body for measuring the passage of the months and years as His religion spread across the globe?

10:5 It is He Who made the sun a bright radiance and the moon a light, and determined phases for it so that you may know the number of years and the reckoning. Allah did not create that except in truth, expounding the Signs to a people who know.

The moon’s brightness is a reflection of the sun’s light, not a light on its own and the phases of the moons are definitely not the best way to keep track of the number of years to Judgement Day (“the reckoning”). Can Allah’s fondness for His former illustrious self in the pantheon of gods worshipped by the pre-Islamic Arabs be any more evident? 

The lunar calendar need not have needlessly complicated things by moving through the seasons if Allah had not banned the practice of adding a thirteenth month every now and then. It was the custom of some of the tribes that shared the Peninsula, before the Muslim conquest, to add a thirteenth month when it became obvious that the lunar calendar had lost all connection with the seasons. This, Allah claimed, was an attempt by the unbelievers to interfere with His Sacred Months and He forbade it. 

9:36 The number of months, with Allah, is twelve months by Allah’s Ordinance from the day He created the heavens and the earth. Four of these are Sacred. This is the right religion, so do not wrong yourselves during them; but fight the polytheists all together just as they fight you all together; and know that Allah is on the side of the righteous.

9:37 Postponing the [Sacred Month] is an added disbelief by which the unbelievers seek to mislead, allowing it one year and prohibiting it another year, so as to equal the number [of months] Allah has made sacred. Their evil deeds are made attractive to them; and Allah does not guide the unbelieving people.

It is Allah’s adoption of the pagan calendar that makes the observation of Ramadan, other than in Muhammad’s neighborhood, an absurdity. For some reason, from his perch in Paradise, not only could God not appreciate that the Earth was a sphere but that the amount of daylight on the far reaches of that sphere varies considerably depending on the season and the hemisphere, making His movable feast impossible to perform at times and a health risk.

What are believers who live above the Arctic circle to do when the arrival of the Month of Great Heat coincides with a period of extreme cold and a sun that does not rise or rises for a only a short period of time because of the tilting of our sphere back and forth during a solar year, something that Allah should have been aware of.

Muhammad has nothing to say on the matter, leaving Islamic scholars to sort it out for themselves. Some have “suggested fasting by the clock instead of by the sun, using the sunrise and sunset times of the holy city of Mecca as opposed to local time.” This would, of course, contravene the Koran.

Allah, in the following revelation, makes it abundantly clear that it is only after darkness has fallen that it is halal to eat, drink and fornicate during the Month of Great Heat, and to stop making merry and return to fasting and abstinence when “you can discern the white thread from the black thread of dawn.”

2:187 It has been made lawful to you on the night of fasting to approach your wives; they are a raiment for you, and you are a raiment for them. Allah knows that you used to betray yourselves, but He accepted your repentance and pardoned you. So now get to them (the wives) and seek what Allah has ordained for you. Eat and drink until you can discern the white thread from the black thread of dawn. Then complete the fast till nightfall. But do not approach them (the wives) while you are in devotion at the mosque. Those are the bounds of Allah; do not approach them. Thus Allah makes clear his revelations to mankind, that they may fear Him.

Others have suggested that “those who live close to the Arctic Circle, where they have continual night or continual day for several months, should look to the closest city to them where night and day are distinct.” That last suggestion is moot in Canada where it would still make for more than twenty-three hours without food if the closest city is Inuvik, Yellowknife or Whitehorse.

The issue as to when to eat and when not to eat, when to have sex and when not to have sex, when to pray, etc., becomes even more confusing when the Month of Great Heat falls in the period when the days are one long, cold dark night.

What is seldom talked about is how Ramadan can have an impact on your bodily functions, and not in a good way. The Fast of Ramadan is a misnomer. Ramadan is not so much a fast, which can be beneficial, but a changing of your eating schedule for 30 consecutive days from three balanced meals during the day, to one meal after nightfall on which some will gorge while others pick at it, perhaps hoping to avoid the impact on a confused digestive system.

Health concerns would not have been an issue in the hot sunny deserts of Arabia, where the tradition originated, when your daily main meal was after the sun set, for obvious reasons. Modern-day Islam does make allowance for diabetics and people who must take medicine with food at a specific time of the day. For otherwise healthy people, whose eating schedule was not that of a Torrid Zone desert dweller, constipation is the most common side effect of observing the Fast of Ramadan.

At some latitudes the lateness of the one meal of the day during Ramadan will be even more conducive to an uncooperative colon. Many observers of the Fast stock up on laxatives before the onset of the Month of Great Heat as a precaution.

While the risk of a blocked colon was less likely at the latitude of Medina, the place Muhammad called home when the fast was promulgated, he still took precautions, breaking his daily fast with a helping of one or more dates, a natural laxative. In keeping with this tradition, many halal food banks, such as Ottawa's Sadaqa Food Bank, include at least one box of dates in their Ramadan food hamper.

Nowadays, except in the most primitive corners of the world, the impact of Ramadan is not only limited to the health of those who fast during the day then gorge themselves before getting a few hours of rest before starting all over again, but on bus drivers, engineers, doctors… on whose alertness at all times lives depend.

Five Perplexing Pillars - The Hajj