The Spirit of Fasting

The Arabic term for fasting is sawm’, which means to abstain. It is aimed at detaching oneself from the world and devoting one’s life entirely to God (73:8). The outer sign of fasting is the abstention from food from morning till evening. But in its essence, it is to withdraw from all worldly attachments and reduce all mundane necessities to a minimum.

This fasting aims at weakening man’s material aspect and strengthening his spirituality. Man is made up of body and soul. Just as the body requires physical nourishment, so must the soul be nourished spiritually. To be sure, fasting results in physical discomfort. But God has nothing to gain from causing human beings unnecessary trouble, and man has to satisfy his material needs; but if he wants to discover the truth, it is essential, at least for a few fixed days, to retire from the material world to develop the spiritual part in him, so that he will be able to attain spirituality.