Prescription for piety

THE literal meaning of the Quranic word Saum for fasting is ‘to stop, to keep quiet’. While fasting, one has to stop certain normal and usual acts which, though permitted are categorized as carnal and sensual demands of the living body — eating and drinking and indulging in lawful sex.

Obviously, the purpose of fasting is to keep men and women away from such demands of life which humans share with animals. In the words of Shah Waliullah, it is a month-long exercise to “counteract the effects of the poison of sensuality.”

The Quran tells its listeners that “fasting has been prescribed to you as to those before you, so that you may attain piety.” (2:183). Here, two aspects of the commandment on fasting attract our attention. One, that this form of worship is not an innovation but a continuation of the practice of the previous people who had received such prescription from the Almighty.

About Divine guidance, the Quranic pronouncements are loud and clear: “Certainly We have raised in every nation a Prophet proclaiming: serve God and shun false gods. Then there were some among them whom God guided but some remained in the grip of error” (16:36). Another quotation from the Quran sheds more light on the subject: “Unto each nation We have given sacred rites which they are to perform. So, let them not dispute with you in the matter.” (22:67).

Fasts were observed by pre-Islamic people not in a particular month but on special days in the year. For instance, the Jews fast on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) on 10th of Tisri and 9th of Ablast (these are the months of Jewish calender) from “eve to eve”, a duration of 24 hours, which is excessive and inhumane. That is why the Hebrew word for fasting has been translated as “afflicting one’s soul”, because the Jewish concept of fasting is that of penance; and all their special days of fasting fall on certain sad day of their history.

To express remorse, they had to look like aggrieved persons and, as the New Testament says, Jesus Christ deprecated this and advised his own followers against it. The relevant excerpts from the New Testament is self-explanatory: “And when you fast do not put on a sad face as the hypocrites do. They neglect their appearance so that every one will see that they are fasting. I assure you that they had already been paid in full. When you go without food, wash your face and comb your hair so that others cannot know that you are fasting only your Father, who is unseen, will know” (Mathew 6:16-17).

Islam has made fasting a bearable exercise, though exercise it is and is intended to be. But to make it bearable the holy Prophet (PBUH) has set his personal example by eating at Sehr time (before day-break) and breaking the fast by taking Iftari soon after the sun-set — how soon is left to the judgment of the jurists. also, had a solar month been fixed for this exercise of attaining piety, it would have been either always summer in the northern hemisphere or always winter in the southern, making it mortifying for the large mass of humanity inhabiting the northern hemisphere.

The choice of lunar calender for religious festivals by Muslims all over the world even now when solar calendar is the universal calender, is based on wisdom and not blind faith. Under the lunar calendar, the climate of every place on the planet keeps transiting from hot summer to cold winter, and vice versa, gradually and slowly.

The Divine intention appears to be to make fasting easy for all. So, Islam modifies the approach and the practice of earlier generations of mankind, a fair idea of which has been presented in the foregoing paragraphs.

The Quran allows the following concessions in special cases. It says: “Fast a number of days, and for him who is sick or on journey the same number of other days; and for those who can afford (to fast with hardship), there is a ransom the feeding of an indigent person” (2:184). The meaning in brackets is based on the opinion of quite a few eminent theologians and religious scholars — Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanwi and Maulana Abul Hasan Ali Nadvi in whose opinion the ‘ransom’ in lieu of fasting is applicable to old, feeble persons or those who are terminally ill, who could fast only with severe hardship

This opinion (apart from other facts) finds adequate support from the words: “Allah desires for you ease and not hardship” appearing in Ayat 185. The object of fasting, according to Ayat 183 (quoted in full in the second para above), is “attaining piety” which, it can be argued is possible by achieving purity of thought and by performance of good deeds (amale saleh) and not by unbearable self-mortification and extreme hardship, as would be the case if old and infirm or ailing persons are made to fast, come what may.

Looking at it from another angle, one can further argue that had physical mortification and hardship been the raison d’etre, or the main purpose of prescribing saum (fasting) as an obligatory form of Allah’s worship, it would have been prescribed either before, or at least concurrently with, salat (five-time daily prayer).

But it is not so, fasting having been prescribed in the second year of Hijrah when the holy Prophet had already migrated from his native city of Makkah and had settled in Madina. Salat, on the other hand, had already been prescribed in Makkah soon after Apostleship (Risalat), when offering prayer in congregation invited trouble from the Makkan polytheists who outnumbered the Muslim converts.

Fasting is to be observed in privacy of one’s home and no public display of the fact that one is fasting is ordained, nor is it desirable. Therefore, it could have been enforced on the earliest converts in Makkah without causing any kind of instigation to the non-believers and inciting them to violence against the small band of Muslims.

Abstinence from food and enjoyment of all kinds was ordained when all this was available in madina and the accelerated pace of conversions and conquests had opened a new vista of worldly attractions. The time was ripe to ward off the evils that accompany such attractions. This appears to have been the right time to impose a full one month’s regime of self-denial and day-time abstinence from food and drinks and from pleasures of the flesh to keep the spirit sustained. This might explain why saum was ordained long after Salat.

The denial of food and drink and abstinence from other pleasures in the month of Ramazan are an apparent personal unease for the individuals who fast, but by designating a particular lunar month for fasting by ‘believers’ all over the world, saum has acquired the significance of a collective exercise of self-abnegation by the entire community dispersed all over the globe.

In line with other institutions of Islamic worship, like Friday prayers and Hajj pilgrimage, fasting too is a collective form of prayer, blending the religious ritual with the true social spirit — “enlarging the sphere of human association”, to borrow a phrase from Iqbal’s ‘Reconstruction of Religious Thought.’

Reconstruction: the need of the hour

IT IS now nearly three weeks since we were traumatized by the great Kashmir earthquake of 2005. It will be long remembered by our children and their grandchildren as an event in their lives, just as the great Quetta earthquake of 1935 is remembered in our collective memory.

Since October 8 there have been over 900 aftershocks, ranging from a very low intensity to last Sunday’s tremor recording 5.9 on the Richter scale. Aftershocks are considered to be quite normal after a big quake. However, none of these shocks, including last Sunday’s, appear to have caused any damage to life or property other than causing landslides. As to why these aftershocks are relatively benign is something that experts in seismography can best explain. The study of tectonic plates under earth movements is a science which is still in its infancy.

The benign character of last Sunday’s quake, however, points to a tell-tale message for earthquake rehabilitation. The other singularity of this earth-shaking phenomenon is — as far as I know — the probability of a major quake occurring at or about the same point of the seismic fault line is said to be very low.

The starting point of our rehabilitation thinking should take into consideration the features cited above.

The present emphasis of the world community and our own want is to gather tents. This is as it should be. But, I want to point out that our solo focus on tent refuge detracts from the more substantive major sheltering idea. It is estimated that between 20 and 30 per cent of the fallen homes can be rebuilt immediately provided some assistance in cash or building material can be provided partly as free grant and partly as interest-free loan.

I estimate that a grant-cum-loan of between Rs50,000 and Rs100,000 per house, if given, before the heavy winter sets in will restore the homes of, or at least provide partial shelter to, many thousands of families. The cost of rebuilding about 50,000 homesteads will be in the region of three billion rupees — not too heavy a price to pay to help normalize life for the affectees.

Two factors will help housebuilding: much of the material is already available at site — stone blocks and same wooden rafters. However, if hollow cement blocks were to be manufactured and made available at about half a dozen sites in the affected areas, this would be a great help. This is also true of wooden rafters cut to various sizes and cement. The majority of houses do not have G.l. sheet roofing, but those which have can easily resuscitate the roof. The second factor that speeds rehabilitation is the natural desire of the affectees to move away from a tented camp to a house of their own. But those who will be in camps for more than six or eight months are likely to become ‘internal’ refugees depending on the dole. A substantial number of the men-folk in the affected areas work in major urban centres. The government may consider passing an ordnance granting such affectees, working in the organized sector, leave for the month of November on full pay from their employers to help in the reconstruction of their homes. All available hands are needed to clear the debris and start to build.

Time is to be caught by the forelock. Reconstruction is possible in areas up to 5,000 feet in November; but not so thereafter. Therefore, a mechanism has to be evolved within the next few days for the grant of loans.

Likewise, our architects’ associations should immediately publicize in local newspapers simple practical ideas on how to make the earthquake zone houses safer. These suggestions should include designs and materials currently in use.

The new authority recently established by President Musharraf for reconstruction and rehabilitation of the quake victims has a huge task before it. It may set a deadline for suggestions from the public in respect of each major area. For example, roads may need to be aligned, bazaars widened, new springs of water activated and so on. Given the race against time, some decisions may have been taken without much research. These flaws and errors have to be taken care of as work progresses. Let us be thankful for small mercies. The quake could have happened a month or two later. Just imagine the consequences in that event.

The writer is an MNA.

E-mail: murbr@isb.paknet.com.pk

Will it doom the war?

MEDIA attention today is focused on the death of the 2,000th American soldier in Iraq. But that grim event alone probably won’t prove a tipping point in public opposition to the war.

After 30 months of fighting, most Americans have already turned against the war. Polls find that 54 per cent believe the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq, up from 24 per cent in March 2003, at the start of the war.

It’s not the specific number of casualties so much as the steady drumbeat of carnage that causes people to lose their stomach for war. The truth is that even dramatic events do not necessarily greatly affect support for the cause.

Compare Iraq to Vietnam. Although the 1968 Tet offensive, in which the US military took heavy losses, did cause people to worry that the war was not going well, support did not plummet. It simply continued to drift downward. In Iraq, support bumped up a bit when Saddam Hussein was captured and when elections were held, and it slumped at the time of the Abu Ghraib disclosures. But in each of these cases, it soon returned to its previous course.

What’s unprecedented about this war is how fast support is eroding. Casualty tolerance in Iraq is clearly much lower than it was in Vietnam.

Using comparable poll questions, support levels for this war when 2,000 American soldiers have been killed are about the same as they were in the Vietnam War when well over 20,000 had perished. This strongly suggests that the public places a much lower value on the stakes in Iraq than it did in Vietnam, a conflict that was at least initially accepted to be important in the contest with international communism.

The erosion of support for the Iraq war has continued throughout 2005, with some fluctuations. Support for the war rose briefly at the time of the London bombings in the summer, perhaps because of fears of terrorism on US soil. But the attacks also tended to undercut the Bush administration’s argument that the terrorists were so busy in Iraq that they couldn’t operate elsewhere.

The Bush administration hopes to reverse the downward trend with upbeat speechmaking that claims progress in Iraq. The same approach was used in the Vietnam War but with little success. The problem is that people who always believed the war wasn’t “worth it” won’t be converted, and those who have become disenchanted are not easily won back. If you find you have bought a car for twice its value, you are likely to continue to regard the deal as a bad one even if you come to like the car.

Opposition to the war in Iraq is not just widespread, it’s quite intense. More than 80 per cent of war opponents say they “strongly” object, and over half say they are angry about the war, not merely dissatisfied.

In addition, extensive comparative analysis by Gary Jacobson of UC San Diego has demonstrated that partisan divisions over not just this president but over this war are greater than for any president or any military conflict in the last half-century.

This means that approval levels for George W. Bush and his war depend mainly on the steadfast support of Republicans. The Democrats have become almost completely disaffected, and support by independents also has declined significantly. Moreover, there are signs over the last month or two that even the remarkably loyal Republicans may be beginning to fade.

Polls, however, are not referendums. Eroding public support cannot keep the administration from continuing to prosecute the war any more than discontent did in Vietnam, unless it is expressed in congressional action. Moreover, though a decline in American casualty rates is unlikely to boost support, it may, as in Vietnam, cause the public to pay less attention to the conflict.

However, in one important respect, withdrawal from Vietnam was much more difficult politically for congressional opponents than it would be in the case of Iraq. North Vietnam held about 500 Americans prisoner, and leaving Vietnam without getting those prisoners back was a political nonstarter.

There is no comparable POW problem in Iraq — but that doesn’t mean ending the war will be easy. —Dawn/Los Angeles Times