You asked me to write something about this tormented word: fasting. People have attributed to it so many wisdoms and poured upon it so many benefits that, if you were to contemplate them, they would amount to nothing more than a trivial aspect of the experiences a fasting person undergoes. You would see them building their benefits and wisdoms on illogical foundations, like their claim that when the rich person feels hunger during their fast, they sense—or rather, come to know—how the pang of hunger feels in the stomach of the poor. Thus, they become quicker to give generously with their wealth and food. Then they claim that when the poor fasting person realizes they are equal to the rich in hunger, they become content and their soul is put at ease—though I do not know whether this is due to their schadenfreude toward the rich, who now hunger as they hunger and thirst as they thirst, or due to their love for equality in whatever form it takes, no matter how it manifests!

You continue to hear such wisdoms until it seems as though your Lord only prescribed this act of worship so that the poor and the rich alike may live under the dominion of their stomachs—hungry and satiated!

Ever since Muslims were afflicted with misinterpreting the meanings of their acts of worship, ever since they introduced into them what does not belong to them, their affairs have deteriorated. Their enemies—from among themselves and from beyond—have infiltrated them, and discord has spread among them. They have persisted in error after error until you see them as they are today: multitudes stretching from China to Marrakesh, oppressed by tyrants—nay, assaulted in their very homes by a band of ancient swindlers and sons of humiliation and misery, tearing the remnants of their religion and language from the Holy Land in the worst possible manner. All their outrage amounts to is clamorous voices, only to return to their tables of indulgence, the pleasures of the self, and the beds of comfort, luxury, and ease. They clung to life and the means of life, so they were humiliated until humiliation killed them. Had they clung to death and the means of death, they would have been honored by it in this life and the Hereafter.

Fasting was prescribed for us to deliver us from such calamity, but we forgot God, so He made us forget ourselves. We reduced the greatest act of worship imposed upon us to a mere matter of food—abstaining from it to improve our health, giving it away to sympathize with the poor, and gathering over it to unite our hearts. Yet we fast the month of Ramadan without improving our health, without truly sympathizing with the poor, and without uniting our hearts. And even if some of that is achieved, it quickly vanishes with the end of the month, and its effects on the soul, the body, and society come to an end.

If we were to do justice to this oppressed, tormented word, we would see fasting—as it was prescribed for the people of this religion—as pure obedience between the servant and their Lord. The destitute and the wealthy both perform it seeking God’s pleasure, observing it collectively in Ramadan and individually at other times—not to dwell on the meanings of the stomach through giving or deprivation, but to liberate themselves together from the dominion of food and drink, from the dominion of desires, indeed from the dominion of every deficiency: from the dominion of fear, so that neither fears anyone but God; from the dominion of ostentation, so that they act only for God. There is no intermediary between the fasting person and their Lord, and nothing of worldly matters, bodily needs, instinctive urges, or fleeting thoughts stands between them and responding to their Lord.

So contemplate the meaning of fasting from any angle: it is the emancipation of the human soul from every bondage—from the bondage of life and its demands, from the bondage of the body and its needs in food and drink, from the bondage of the soul and its desires, from the bondage of the mind and its impulses, from the bondage of fears, both present and absent—until it feels pure freedom: the freedom of existence, the freedom of will, and the freedom of action. The liberation of the Muslim soul is the ultimate purpose of the fasting prescribed as an obligation and performed voluntarily. This free soul must know that God, who entrusted it with stewardship on earth—to establish truth, to judge with truth, and to act with truth—does not accept for it to submit to the greatest bodily needs, for it is stronger than them; nor to the most oppressive demands of life, for it is nobler than them; nor to the most tyrannical forces on earth, for His dominion is mightier and more exalted.

God honored these acts of worship when He revealed to His Messenger (peace be upon him) to inform the people on His behalf: "Fasting is for Me."

There is no ostentation in it, for it is devoted solely to God—performed for none but His sake. Thus, God reserved it for Himself apart from all other acts of worship. He alone accepts it from His servant, and He alone rewards it as He wills.

God has shown us a glimpse of this meaning by equating fasting with the freeing of a slave in three rulings from His Book:

1. For unintentional killing of a believer, He prescribed the freeing of a believing slave and blood money to the family: "And whoever does not find [one or cannot afford to buy one] – then [instead], a fast for two months consecutively, [seeking] acceptance of repentance from Allah." (An-Nisa: 92)

2. For those who declare estrangement (ẓihār) from their wivesand then retract, He prescribed the freeing of a slave before intimacy resumes: "And he who does not find [a slave] – then a fast for two months consecutively before they touch one another." (Mujadila: 4)

3. For expiation of an oath, He prescribed the freeing of a slave: "And whoever cannot find [or afford such an animal] – then a fast of three days." (Al-Ma’idah: 8)

Consider why God prescribed for those who commit any of these three sins to free a believing soul from the bondage of enslavement—and if they cannot, to work on freeing their own souls from the bondage of life’s demands, bodily necessities, and the desires of the self. Fasting, as you see, is the worship of the free, the refinement of the free, and the culture of the free.

If every Muslim were to strive to fully grasp through fasting the meanings of freedom, its causes, and its keys, and if they were to disdain—for the sake of their religion and themselves—that the wisdom of their fasting be tied to intestines, bowels, and stomachs, whether in giving food or depriving themselves of it, then we would see the Muslim world scarcely tolerating oppression. For the Muslim souls would possess a might greater than injustice—the might of souls that fear none but God, whose submission belongs only to the Creator of the heavens and the earth and all between them. We would see the Muslim world unconquered by colonialism, for Muslim souls would be capable of renouncing every pleasure, breaking free from every dominion, enduring hunger and deprivation, and bearing pain and hardship with patience and sincerity—migrating in the path of the Highest Truth, the freedom instilled in them by their fasting, and the emancipation of the millions wrongfully enslaved across the earth. Every Muslim would become a resounding cry across the land, igniting hearts and calling them to cast off every form of idolatry born from the fear of oppression and the love of life, luxury, and comfort—the very allies of colonialism over people.

On the day Muslims truly understand their fasting, on the day they make it a school to liberate their souls from every necessity and every deficiency, then it becomes God’s right to grant victory to this fasting faction—those who rise above the needs of their bodies and the desires of their souls, seeking the honor that their Lord has reserved for them, the honor with which He dignified the children of Adam when He created them in this world as equals, free—where no one is superior to another except in piety and good deeds.

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