A MONTH OF SPIRITUAL EXPLORATION
“And when My servants ask thee concerning Me, surely I am nigh. I respond to the call of the suppliant when he calls on Me. So they should listen to My call and have faith in Me; so that they may be rightly guided.”
وَإِذَا سَأَلَكَ عِبَادِى عَنِّى فَإِنِّى قَرِيبٌ أُجِيبُ دَعْوَةَ ٱلدَّاعِ إِذَا دَعَانِ فَلْيَسْتَجِيبُوا۟ لِى وَلْيُؤْمِنُوا۟ بِى لَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْشُدُونَ
Al-Baqara (The Cow) 2:186
The commandment to observe one whole month every year as a month of Fasting is an act of great confidence in man’s high destiny. The above verse, interposed in the injunctions concerning fasting, highlights what that destiny is. It lies in man’s capacity to get into direct person to person relationship with God.
The words “ask thee concerning Me” leave no room for doubt that in God’s eye man has in him the potentialities to discover God for himself just as we make so many other discoveries. Man has aptly been described as a discoverer and conqueror of the secrets of Nature. The greatest discovery, this Quranic verse tells us, is the discovery of God, the Supreme Personality Who is the Author of the whole of Nature.
The lines that follow in the above verse hold out the assurance that God is not only really there, but He also actively participates in this quest of man by positive responses to his prayers. The seeker is therefore told to be on the look-out for those responses, the signals, as it were, to the explorer beckoning him to keep on going in that direction. The whole imagery reminds one of a ship sailing on a dark night on the high sea beset with dangerous rocks being guided in its course by the beaming signals of a distant beacon.
This is the high destiny assigned to man who voyages, as it were, on the main of life. He must discover God for himself and establish a
direct and intimate contact with Him as between one person and another. That way alone lies the haven of peace and content.
This picture of God as a Living Personality may come jarring to the ears of rationalistically minded friends. Modern man would rather talk of God as an Ultimate Reality, the Source of Life, the Ground of our being, the Depth of existence – indeed any philosophic abstraction, than face up to the concept of Him as a Person or Personality.
The fact remains, however, that God is either a Personal God or what we worship is anything but God. A philosophic abstraction is certainly not the God of religion. God, as witnessed to by all the prophets since the dawn of life, is the One Who sees, Who hears, Who speaks, Who knows, Who wills and so forth. And these are the traits that we associate with the term Person or Personality.
The month-long fasting is meant to serve so many useful purposes. One purpose, in the Quranic words, is laallakum tattaqoon – i.e. that you may learn to eschew the paths of evil and cultivate moral fibre. Incidentally, fasting also gives us an insight into what deprivation from the basic needs of life means, thereby enabling us to sympathise with our poor fellowmen and share our amenities with them. Another by-product of fasting is that it even tones up man’s physical health. Self-discipline, self-control, self-conquest which are the hallmark of a strong character, are some other qualities that Fasting breeds. A Humanist would be quite satisfied with these achievements as a result of Fasting. But not a man of religion. No amount of character-building can satisfy the deepest yearning of the human soul to know the why, whence, whither and wherefore of this earthly existence. The supreme benefit that is wrapped up with Fasting lies, as underlined in the above verse, in satisfying that yearning by putting man into something like person-to-person relationship with God – man calling to God and God responding to his calls.
Muslims would be a nation of saints if only they were to enter into the spirit of Fasting. That anyway is the high destiny which according to the above Quranic verse they are meant to pursue.
M.Y.Khan
The Light – January 8, 1965.
