رمضان مبارك

For those of my readers who don’t read Arabic, the above reads (from right to left) “Ramadaan Mubaarak”, which is more commonly transliterated “Ramadan Mubarak”. I won’t offer you a pronunciation guide here, and it takes practice anyway.

What it means is “blessings of Ramadan”.

رمضان is Islam’s holy “month”. Months in Islam are based on the lunar cycle and so the start and end are always shifting relative to the Gregorian calendar we’re used to in the West.

During this month, Muslims who satisfy certain criteria (and are physically able) are to fast from dawn to dusk. At the moment, that means no food, drink or any nutrition or medicine to enter the system? during these hours. It means no vain talk, no swearing, backbiting, fighting, or to be precise, extra vigilance over those things that are not allowed in Islam anyway.

So for this month, I will not be swearing on my blog and I’ll try insha’Allah to be as “good” as possible.

I kept some fasts last year and even more the year before, al-Hamdulillah, but I will not be keeping any this year. As my regulars know, I have Type I diabetes and if it’s not well controlled, I should not fast. In Islam, Allah (SWT) ordains for those of us who are not able to fast a get-out clause; we are to feed a poor person for this month. Practically speaking, this means alms. I won’t get into the technicalities, but again, like much of Islam, it’s all very practical.

Ramadan is the month in which the Qur’an was originally revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (saw). For those of you who think you’ve read the Qur’an and cannot read Arabic, I’m afraid you haven’t actually read the Qur’an. I know – this took me by surprise when I first learned it a few years back, but it’s perfectly reasonable. The nature of the Arabic language (which I spent a year learning, and now class myself as a beginner at) allows for constructs based on a flexible root system that simply could not be mapped to any other language. Thus, we Muslims refer to English “translations” as “renderings of the meaning of the Qur’an”. The Qur’an cannot be translated and needs to be read, and ideally understood in the original Arabic.

I wanted to learn the meaning of the Qur’an. I am a long way from it, but will continue on this path insha’Allah. I am already staggered at the profundity, the depth, the versatility and the majesty of the Arabic language and I shudder to think how peerlessly majestic the language of the Qur’an is.

Recall that the pagans of Arabia had a strong oral tradition and that poetry was a cornerstone of their culture. The Qur’an brought grown men to tears with the almost unbearable elegance and power of the language. It is hard for us to imagine. We listen to Shakespeare and some of us, in fact, most of us, struggle to feel the impact.

It is astonishing to note that with the Qur’an being the first book written in the Arabic language, to this day, over a millennium later, it has not been matched in literary quality, yet alone surpassed. To understand the miracle that was the Qur’an, one must bear in mind that Arabic poetry was the highest art in pre-Islamic Arabia. Poets were feted, they were bigger than movie stars. It was in this environment that the Qur’an made a world-shifting impact, never to be matched. Little wonder that Arabia was transformed and united under the banner of Islam and the leadership of the Unlettered Prophet (saw).

The cure for all ignorance is education. Ignorance breeds misunderstanding and hatred. Education offers a path away from that, which not all of us unfortunately, are walking on all of the time. Myself included. Ramadan offers us Muslims a yearly reminder to be the best that we can be.

May God bless all of you.