In other words, the month of Ramadan is a month of spiritual examination and training. It is a month of high social and communal value. Ramadan helps you discover the human in you, the same way it awakens your spiritual potentials. Ramadan comes to bond the individual to and with his community; it functions in waking the community up to its strength in the individual. Ramadan frees Muslims from their appetitive and vegetative bondages; it raises them up to such heights as are open only to the angels and the chosen ones among the servants of the Almighty. If humanity gets to know of its huge blessings, so goes the tradition, they would have requested the Almighty to make fasting a whole year, not just a month or 29 days, as is presently the case. Now today’s sermon is concerned with the exploration of newer paths towards a successful and more rewarding fasting season. Perhaps this should begin with the call for early preparation for the month of Ramadan. In other words, though experience has taught us that early planning in all human endeavour makes for successful outcomes, and that the earlier the preparation of a student the more the likelihood of his success in the examination, it appears that this timeless wisdom often enjoys little patronage with reference to Muslims’ approach to the month of Ramadan. Thus hours to the first day in the month, there usually occurs a bedlam in some markets across major cities of this country. This is often caused by the sudden realization, by adherents of Islam that the first supererogatory prayer (al-tarawih), which usually marks the beginning of the month would be held that same night and that the early morning meal (sahur) would be due on the following day. Thus, Muslim women and men would now proceed to the various markets in order to buy food items with which their families would begin fasting. On such days, traders in the market usually hike prices of foodstuffs. A cup of rice, which hitherto used to sell for, for example, N50, would now be sold for N100. That brother of mine would consequently be ‘punished’ by the shylock traders for his lack of planning. He would invariably go back home utterly disappointed for his inability to buy the items his wife had requested from him. My Muslim sister, whose task it is to procure necessary materials for her family, would become disconsolate simply because food prices had reached the rooftop. The Muslim’s home front would then become un-homely; the joy, which Ramadan should normally occasion in Muslim homes, would then become tempered by its inability to satisfy its basic needs.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Jun 2013 11:39:06 +0000
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