Ramadan: The Month of
Spiritual Re-Armament
His Eminence (Late)
Dr. Muhammad Fazlur Rahman Ansari Al-Qadri (RA.)
The
month of Ramadan has come again, bringing all the spiritual blessings and
benefits that Allah, in His infinite Mercy and Grace, has placed in it and
apportioned for those Faithful Servants who are blessed with the will to
observe its rigorous and re-invigorating Spiritual Discipline faithfully and
conscientiously. It is the month in which Allah’s Final Messenger (ﷺ)
to Mankind and Alchemy of Happiness and felicity, the Holy Qur’an, came, in its
first showers of mercy, to Allah’s Final Messenger (ﷺ) and mankind’s First
and Last World-Teacher, the Holy Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) (Allah’s choicest
blessings be with him for all time to come!). That being so, it was, and is, only
natural that this blessed month should form a land-mark in the spiritual
endeavour of every individual Muslims, even as it forms a land-mark and a
mile-stone–verily, the greatest and the most important–in the entire history of
human spiritual progress.
Fasting, with all its pangs of
thirst and hunger, and extra prayers of Tarawih, with all the physical fatigue
that they mean night after night, have been prescribed merely as an act of abstention
from the physical and carnal appetites but also as a dynamic struggle for
cleansing the self from all forms and all types of moral and spiritual impurities.
For, the Holy Prophet (ﷺ) has made it amply clear that the act of fasting
would not be acceptable to Allah and will not bear fruit if, side by side with abstention
from physical appetites, it does not mean abstention
from all forms of moral and Spritual wrongs. Indeed, there is a very clear line
of demarcation between "starving" and "fasting"!
The entire life of a Muslim has
been conceived by Allah and His Holy Prophet (ﷺ) as a life of
discipline, for Islam means DISCIPLINE—spiritual, moral,
mental and physical. This discipline attains
its climax every
year during the
month of Ramadan when the
tempo of the Muslim's
spiritual struggle increases and
his entire endeavour during the preceding eleven months crystallizes into
a stepping-stone for
further spiritual progress....
Verily, Islamic life is a life of progress—continuous and virtually
unlimited—in this world as well as beyond the grave!
All
the rigorous discipline of the month of Ramadan is meant to make us better
human beings,—with the
final aim of making the world a better world. Let us not, therefore, waste this
great and golden opportunity. Our spiritual re-armament is a dire necessity
today more than it was ever before. The world is in turmoil. The world
is in dire
distress. Humanity is
confronted with an unprecedented
catastrophe and collapse. Let not the Muslims fail themselves and the
world-at-large at this stage. Let them gird their loins for spiritual
re-armament. Let them rise to do their duty before it is too late.
(Courtesy: The Voice of Islam: Vol. 3, May 1955)
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