Chances are that you may have been to one of those get-togethers in the blessed month of Ramzan commonly known as ‘iftar parties’. First and foremost, who decided to call it a party? It is and should always be termed as an iftar. The moment the word ‘party’ is added to it, the iftar becomes secondary as the much needed and awaited party takes over. Some men often gather and try to impress one another about their knowledge of Islam. All of a sudden, everyone thinks he is a scholar and tries to regurgitate lines that he remembers the televangelist utter at the suhoor or iftar transmission of the idiot box. The one upmanship about the depth of knowledge becomes the topic of discussion and every faithful at the scene tries to compete for the most righteous spot. At times heated arguments break out about a certain practice, certain event in history surrounding the faith and if nothing else, who prays the most. Some ladies are not so behind in this spiritual endeavour as the domesticated ones try to prove to the others who is better than the other. Who gets up in the wee hours of the morning and makes those scrumptious pre-dawn meals with a culinary perfection. The emphasis is always on the number of dishes prepared in the least amount of time and to the total satisfaction of the man of the house. Then the discussion in that quarter turns to religion too and each lady tries to outdo the other by proving to the other how much praying is done by her on top of her hectic job of being a ‘domestic engineer’. Children if you thought are perhaps a bit smarter than their parents, then you are in for a surprise. The discussion among children is often about who has fasted the most and so on and so forth. Now you know why I have an issue with calling an iftar get-together a party. The scene often turns into a party. Families compete to host such occasions and cite the number of attendees to prove who had a bigger gathering; you get the picture. The guests gobble at the breaking of the fast as if there is no tomorrow. Plates are overloaded and the lust for more and more food is the reigning sentiment in the air. It often makes you wonder was it really worth the starvation of 14 or 15 hours? It often makes you wonder that the voluntary abstinence from food is made up so rapidly, what happened to the abstinence? Then when people are unable to finish their plates, most of the leftovers end up filling the stomachs of plastic or metallic trash cans. There you have it: the scene from the marathon of self-righteousness. Men often sport a beard and ladies make a ‘fashion’ statement of hijab to remain en vogue with the season. One often wonders if piety, humility and modesty requires facial hair, or for that matter, for females a head wrap. A least in this scribe’s flawed opinion, none of these things really define a ‘better’ follower of Islam. It is a social occasion, and yes the name of the Creator and his Holy Messenger (PBUH) is invoked here and there, but overall, it is a party. Then the demands for dinner gain rapid momentum. The self-righteous have to run to the mosques and offer the special prayers of the month. The competition gets to continue at the mosque as well. Often people overdose themselves with the dinner so they could sustain the prayers at the mosque. The talk at the mosque often is about who will stay late and who would leave early, and yes, the self-righteous marathon continues. Who will finish the entire 20 optional prayers and who will not? People often miss the mandatory congregational prayers of the evening and yet stress the 20 optional ones. God forbid, if you ever talk about this practice of fasting in other faiths as well. It enrages a lot of us, as we take this as a very personal and intimate practice of only our faith. Never mind what we have been told about this practice that the reward of fasting is only known to and reserved with God. The media cashes in on the religious fervour of the self-righteous too and barrages the average viewer’s heart and soul with advertisements of the reward in the hereafter on maximum acceleration. To top it off, the state mandates the respect of the month by forcing food outlets to close from dawn to sunset. This is done in the name of safeguarding the faith by curbing temptations for food and drink. But in this scribe’s humble opinion, what good is the test if there is no challenge? The writer is a Pakistani-American mortgage banker. He blogs at http://dasghar.blogspot.com and can be reached at dasghar@aol.com He tweets at http://twitter.com/dasghar