Daily Times

Each year in the month of Ramazan, we are reminded of the promised rewards. The Almighty locks up the devil, and promises 70 times more in rewards for following His commands. The belief is that increasing the reward 70 times is a source of motivation to sinful mortals to mend their ways, try to change for the better and be rewarded by God. If you analyse this incentive, it is meant for self-correction and self-betterment.

Every one of us has a very personal and private relationship with our Creator. The ordinary and sinful mortals have taken this encouragement in many different dimensions, and given it many different shades of their personal liking. The bigger question: is Ramazan a tool of spiritual enhancement or material gains? I know you are about to say, here he goes again. Each year this rant against what is considered perfectly normal and socially acceptable, this scribe tries to find something wrong. Allow me to clarify.

If you are reading these lines and watching your favorite show on TV, my point is clear. To me, at least, religion and show are two opposite things. A religion cannot be a ‘show,’ as religion is not for the purposes of show. When the word show is added, it implies a make-believe arrangement. Religion is not a ‘game,’ and hence, it cannot be wrapped in some game and ensembled as a show where people are pretending or enacting certain things. I know I may not make sense to many people, and may even offend many people, but the reality is that playacting in the name of religion is not something to be proud of.

When actors, comedians and televangelists, in the guise of educating and entertaining general public, actually work to generate more advertising revenue for their programmers, it goes against the essence of what fasting is all about. I am not a religious scholar, but the Islamiat lessons in my primary schooling are still fresh in my memory to this day on the subject of fasting. It is one of the essential pillars of Islam, and only the Almighty knows what the actual reward of fasting really is. Abstinence from essentials like food and water, and efforts to practise patience and bear hardships to evoke humility and consciousness of God, it is all done strictly to please the Almighty and the Almighty alone. It is a sign of obedience towards the will of God.

In our case, unfortunately, the concept is quite the contrary. People take great pains to show off their exercise of fasting. From a child to a grown-up, almost all of us are guilty of that. Starting from early childhood, many of us teach our children to fast to compete with other children. Whatever the justification behind that is, but it surely conditions the child to compete with their cousins or other children of the neighborhood. The typical question between children is: how many days did you fast? When we as parents should be teaching our children that it is a commandment of the Almighty and we do it to please the Almighty, and therefore, fasting is not meant to compete with one another.

The month of Ramazan is to evoke piety in us to seek forgiveness and to be kind to one another. In our case, our attitudes become coarser when we are fasting. Many of us seem to be hell-bent on establishing the correlation between rotten behaviour and an empty stomach. The general complaint may be that this year, the fast is longer; or yes, I feel very hungry. Whether it is 12, 14, 16 or 18 hours, we abstain from the otherwise permissible things to acquire patience and experience hardships of the less fortunate among us. This is again to give us the glimpse of their lives to make us more compassionate and increase our understanding towards their plight.

Instead, our focus is who is doing the Ramazan show on our favourite channel. Who is trying to pretend to be more pious by pronouncing Arabic words in an authentic Arabic accent? The peroxide blonde trying to drape a head cover to act like a true Muslim woman, or the male host displaying his neatly trimmed beard, made-up, attired in designer outfits, trying to act like a perfectly pious man. In between, advertisements playing with religious sentiments emitting signals of ‘buy, buy and buy more’ to gain rewards in the holy month. Something, somewhere is definitely not in place. Ramzan becomes Ramadan, and a simple act of breaking of fast turns into an ‘iftar party’. Where foods are gobbled like there is no tomorrow, or wasted without any remorse. Many starving people of this world can benefit from one such lavish iftar Party, but as they say there is no business like ‘show business’. If these lines have left you a bit perplexed, relax; the lovely woman on screen in the new vermicelli commercial is seeking your immediate attention.

The writer is a Pakistani-US mortgage banker. He can be reached at dasghar@aol.com. He tweets at http://twitter.com/dasghar