Asalamu aleykum, brothers and sisters. I have noticed over the years that fasters break down into three basic categories, the last one being the least popular but the most recommended. What else is new? The most common being the worst! So what are the three?

1-The Deniers affectionately known as the “mu mishkila “(What me worry?) people  . I met those people first in Damascus. The political situation was horrid. The tension was palpable in the air. But when you brought it up, without attempting to blame anyone, you got “the mu mishkila ” response. “We have some of the finest Islamic scholars in the world”(True). “We have some great Sufi tariqats-“True! What could possibly go wrong.?! Well, we all know where that led to- catastrophe! 100’s of thousands killed, millions displaced! Now, I am not saying the denial led to the catastrophe .But it certainly didn’t help. And once you are in denial, thus ignoring the cause, there is no way out! But catastrophe.

And now we have Zelensky of the Ukraine doing the same thing. The Americans warned him! “They are planning an invasion” they told him (There were already 150,000 troops at his doorstep) “What invasion. Don’t say that!” He reproached the Americans for their realism. And look where that led?!Deniers pay a very heavy price for their temporary delusional relief.

Now how does this play out with the fasting process? In many Muslim societies but especially amongst the Arab societies you get the following narrative: “Fasting, it’s so easy for me. I do everything I usually do except I don’t eat”  Easy-peasy. Really?! Well, first it’s their wives that out them: “Ahmad is in such a foul mood all the time he is fasting.” And its their bosses “My employees make so many more mistakes during this month”. What?! I thought it was so easy for them.

The first person that alerted me to this problem was a French-Canadian lady whose husband worked for the Canadian embassy in Morocco. They regularly noticed that their Moroccan Muslim employees became more irritable and more impatient while fasting. Gradually they learnt to be more careful in addressing them. You can be sure that confronted with this phenomenon the employees would be in complete denial: “Me, I am no different than usual. Better, actually because I don’t have to take breaks for eating”. Ya, right. The outsiders could see through their self-deception.

Btw in the hadith Ramadan is referred to as “the month of patience”. Think about it. We don’t have to be patient with things that are easy and pleasant.” Be patient with your well-behaved child” or” be patient with your delicious ice cream” Makes no sense, right? You have to be patient with difficult things. And Ramadan is difficult, make no bones about it! Mubarak for sure ,full of rewards in the hereafter, an order from Allah, for sure. But difficult, nevertheless- as are many of the edicts from our Lord.

I grew up hating denial.( The other side of that coin was that I had a strong inclination for Truth-regardless of the social influences around me.Still do, btw! My mother, may God forgive her and reward her for all her hard work raising us four rebels lol was a somatizer. She would get angry with one of us and get stomachaches after. When I would try to indicate to her  that the stomachaches were her emotional  reaction to our bad behaviour, we would get denial. “No its not that. I just ate too much lasagna at dinner.” Lol. My mom was not an overeater!

To indicate why this is important, I can tell you that at a younger age I too had stomacaches. Once again my mother would try to put it on the food! When I finally got into group therapy at the ripe age of 23 ,i understood the connection with my emotions during the stomachaches and I have never had any since! Except when I do eat bad food lol and get gastroenteritis. But NOT from emotions! So it makes a big difference when you stop denying! Then you can adapt and modify your behaviour and often enough solve the underlying problem!

Then I studied psychoanalysis and learnt that “denial is the most primitive defense mechanism of all!” And when I started researching the Arabic dictionnary I realized that denial and lying came from the same Arabic trilateral  root- k-dh-b. And Allah uses them almost interchangeably in the Quran. So this is important stuff!

There are so many manifestations of this denial mechanism but we can only mention a few here. Here is one that bothered me a lot during the pre-Covid period when I went to Jumaa prayer on a regular basis. Somewhere around the 25th day or so the Iman would get up on the pulpit and say something like:”25 days of Ramadan and it has gone by in the wink of an eye”. Really?! I don’t know what world this Imam is living in but it ain’t mine lol. Each day had its own particular struggle. At one point during almost every day it seemed like the fast would never end. Ever had one of those fasting days? That’s why our Prophet saws called it the month of patience. Maybe I missed the hadith where it says “Ramadan goes by in the wink of an eye” but I doubt it. Instead the Imam should be saying something like; “Congratulations on all your efforts. You are all doing a great job.” Like a good teacher trying to encourage their students or a good coach trying to spur his team on to victory.. That would be compassionate, that would be empathic. I think they need to add on a course in pedagogy and psychology in the Madrassas. But instead we constantly get the message that we are not doing enough! That is what drove the Catholics away from their Churches. Let’s not make the same mistake!

2– The Complainers (or in the vernacular the kvetches lol) These people go around the entire month complaining about their symptoms- much to the chagrin of the Muslims around them. They tell us about their tiredness ,their headaches, their lack of cognitive abilities and brain fog. The deniers hate them. “Stop that brother or sister, you are going to lose all your “ajr”(reward).”You will be rewarded for your sufferings on the other side” True- but that most often doesn’t take away the symptoms. It just makes the first person feel like you have no empathy or compassion. Instead of empathy you get guilt. The famous ADHD researcher Ed Hallowell called that the school of “shame, blame and humiliation”-apparently standard in most traditional societies!

Now the physical symptoms are an important part of the experience and need to be properly managed. For example one thing I learnt early on was that many headaches were actually ,in fact, caffeine withdrawal headaches. One of my convert friends got it so bad one year that he went to the emergency room thinking that he had meningitis! Until we figured it out. I watched my sheikh of the time, Sheikh Nazim breaking fast every day with a cup of tea and taking a cup of tea as the last thing in suhoor(pre-Fajr meal).Only later did I realize that he was managing his caffeine withdrawal that way. Now that is my regular practice-one cup of coffee at iftar and one at suhoor. And most often I will get away without the headache-especially if the fast is only 15 hours or less.

Here, I would like to tell another type of  story(a bad management story) to illustrate another aspect of the managing symptoms story .One year when I went to London for Ramadan- as I did regularly for many years-to be with my sheikh, I met  a young Irish convert from a very difficult background. He had had a father who was an episodic alcoholic with a very bad character. His father would get angry and throw him up against the wall when that happened. Due to multiple traumas like that -many of which gave him concussions, he developed grand-mal epilepsy! So at the beginning of Ramadan he came to consult with me as to how he should manage the fast. I suggested he should go slowly ,perhaps every second day at the beginning, He would hear nothing of it!

It seemed to be working well early on but during the last ten days ,his defenses broke down and he had a grand-mal seizure in the middle of the mosque during Tarawih prayer.There was a group of fanatics there- followers of someone we knew as Greensheikh. They were convinced that this was not a medical condition but rather a jinn possession and wanted to do an exorcism. Most of the attendees however, including myself, saw it for what it was-a neurological event that needed medical attention! A fight broke out between the two groups, a member of the Greensheikh group pulled out a knife and the police had to be called in(Very well-trained British cops I must say) In the end we accompanied the murid to the hospital but one of the “reasonable” group had to deal with a knife-wound to the hand that took weeks to heal after getting infected.. Such is the price of denial.

In fact, many of us know people that are unable to fast-because of diabetes or heart conditions or migraines and many other illnesses. So it must be acknowledged that fasting is a physiological stress. You have to in relatively good health to do it. So beware of deniers! They can be dangerous to your health and even to your life!

3-The Embracers; This is the approach I am recommending. Embrace ALL the Reality-the glory and upliftment and transcendent aspects of Ramadan(the states of Grace) AND the difficult parts. The openings may be brief and subtle. They may be evanescent and hard to capture at times. But they ARE there. What one of my shuyukh called “nafahat” (spiritual breezes).But don’t miss them. Enjoy them -like butterflies in the summer. If they linger, then you are truly blessed. The sufferings will be rewarded as well. So don’t let your physical symptoms distract you from the “barakat” of the month. It’s all good! Embrace it all! The physical symptoms can be managed -with compassion and wisdom-and the transcendent aspects can be savoured-especially if you can open your eyes and your heart to what is occuring on the inner planes. May Allah make this the best and holiest Ramadan ever. And if we don’t see the results on this side of the curtain we will certainly see them  on the other side ! Ramadan Mubarak and Ramadan Karim.