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The foundations and meaning of the Ramadan fast (2/2)

By Rédaction soufisme.org · April 14, 2025 · 4 min read

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Continued from the article “The foundations and meaning of the Ramadan fast (1/2)”.

The three degrees of fasting according to al-Ghazali

Al-Ghazali distinguishes three degrees in fasting:

  1. The fast of the common people: abstaining from indulging the desires of the belly and of sex.
  2. The fast of the elite adds: preserving hearing, sight, tongue, hands and feet from what is harmful to the spiritual path.
  3. The fast of the elite of the elite adds: the fast of the heart, which turns away from worldly preoccupations and vain thoughts, and which flees every orientation other than towards Allah.

The six conditions of the elite’s fast

Again according to al-Ghazali, the fast of the elite, which is that of the pious and virtuous beings (salihun), is made perfect by six conditions:

  1. Withdrawing from the sight of all that is blameworthy and reproved, and of all that preoccupies the heart and distracts it from the remembrance of God.
  2. Restraining one’s tongue from chatter, lying, slander, backbiting, indecent talk, bad behaviour, dispute and contradiction. Jabir relates from Anas ibn Malik the following hadith of the Prophet: “Five behaviours break the fast: lying, slander, malicious talk, the false oath and the covetous gaze.”
  3. Not listening to what is reproved. Qur’an: “Those who listen attentively to falsehood are inveterate devourers of illicit goods” (V, 68).
  4. Preventing the members (hands, feet) from accomplishing reproved acts.
  5. Breaking the fast by eating moderately when the hour comes, and abstaining from sleeping much during the day.
  6. Feeling reverential awe before the uncertainty of knowing whether the fast will be accepted by God.

The spirit of Ramadan

Fasting without sincerity, without vigilance and without the intention of striving towards perfection of behaviour is of no spiritual profit to the faster: it is not accepted and is even considered null before God.

Hadith according to Abu Hurayra: “He who renounces neither uttering lies nor acting deceitfully, God has no need of his depriving himself of drink or food” (al-Bukhari, 1903).

The obligation of fasting does not exclude mercy.

According to Abu Hurayra: “A man came to see the Prophet, peace be upon him, and said to him: ‘O Messenger of God, I am lost!’ ‘What is the matter with you?’, the Prophet asked. ‘I lay with my wife while I was fasting,’ he answered. ‘Do you have a slave you can free?’, asked the Messenger of God. ‘No,’ the man answered. ‘Are you able to fast two months in succession?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you have the means to feed sixty poor people?’ ‘No.’ The man was still standing there when a basket of dates was brought to the Prophet. ‘Where is the man who has just questioned me?’, the Prophet asked. ‘Here I am,’ the man answered. ‘Take this basket,’ said the Prophet, ‘and give its contents in alms.’ ‘Must this alms,’ the man asked, ‘be given to someone poorer than me? I swear by God that there is not, between the two stony plains of Medina, a single family poorer than mine.’ The Prophet began to laugh, so much so that his teeth showed, then he said: ‘Well then, give these dates to your family to eat’” (al-Bukhari, 1936).

According to Jabir ibn ’Abdallah: “Fasting while travelling is no act of piety.”

Fasting and non-judgement

According to Anas ibn Malik: “When we were travelling with the Prophet, he who was fasting addressed no reproach to him who broke the fast, any more than he who broke the fast did to him who was fasting” (al-Bukhari, 1947).

Ibn ’Arabi, in the Futuhat:

“Allah attributed the fast to Himself and stripped the faster of it, although He gave him the order to fast. The faster should therefore look towards his Lord for the whole duration of his fast, in order to realise his qualification fully and not be diverted from it. God attributes the fast to Himself only if it is authentic; and it is so only in the form Allah prescribed for the faster to realise. If the latter does not fast in the manner defined by the Law, he is not a faster and, in that case, there is no fast that Allah could ‘give back’ to him [or whose ‘price’ or ‘reward’ He could pay]. It may indeed happen that the faster imagines himself to be such while he accomplishes, during the fast, acts that disqualify him, such as slander: in that case, he breaks his fast although he abstains from eating. Let the faster be attentive to this point, for it is a matter of preferring God to oneself.”

The month of Ramadan, the heart of the year

’Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (may Allah be pleased with him) said: “The month of Ramadan is as important as the heart in the body, or a prophet among men.”

Bibliography

Further reading

Further reading