Lent versus Ramadan

Ramadan 2013 has ended and Muslims in Finland, particularly must be heaving a sigh of relief.

Feast or Famine? But not both

My Muslim friends are far too polite to directly compare our Lent with their Ramadan but there is always the unspoken criticism that hangs on the air "How can you call Lent a period of fasting when you may still eat three meals a day?"

But Lent and Ramadan are as different as chalk and cheese.

The Catholic Lent is a sustained period of moderate (depending on the attitude and ability of the individual) fasting, a constant source of modest mortification.
Never so severe that our capacity to carry out a surgical operation or drive a bus is placed in jeopardy.

Ramadan, on the other hand, insists on a fast period from dawn to dusk, hard in Britain, even harder in the land of the midnight sun.

A shade easier in the Middle East where dusk occurs in the early evening.

But, at either end of the Muslim fast, there is the unseemly gorging of food and drink (remember, no liquids and no food during daylight hours is the rule). Vast quantities of bulky carbohydrates and protein are eaten in an attempt to see them safely through the day.

And now, as today is the start of the feast of Eid, marking the end of Ramadan, the real feasting begins....not dissimilar to the Christian over indulgence at Christmas.

I have long claimed that Muslims who work in charge of potentially life threatening technology, should be excused duties during Ramadan. The human body was not created to undergo such extremes of feast and famine and it would be interesting to see some statistical evidence such as a rise in A & E admissions during this period.

I still do not understand Ramadan and the Muslims that I have consulted on the matter equally do not seem to be clear as to why they fast.
The most convincing answer has been that it helps the individual understand what it is like to be poor.

 An admirable aim but it would be made better still if they adopted the Lent format which reflects on poverty for 24 hours a day, for 40 days of the year.

Why Ramadan is bad and Lent is good

Mmm.....good soul food!





How does the Christian Lent compare with the Muslim fast of Ramadan? Is one really good and one really bad?

I believe so and will explain my reasons why.

Let me begin by quoting my own programme for today.

 Determined to make a good start in Lent and somewhat overwhelmed by the flood of good posts on fasting and by one Stanislaus Baboolovski's comments on Facebook, I began Lent in suitable style.

One Ryvita avec Marmite accompanied by a green tea was my first meal of the day - about 15 calories methinks.

Now, this is not in any way intended to be a brag, in fact, my normal breakfast is not much more than that.

But I did want to draw attention to what my good friends emphasized in their posts, namely, that giving up a bar of chocolate is pretty naff really and that our forbears did much, much more.

I recall my own parents' account of their Lenten fasts in Canning Town; one main meal a day which was always, salt cod - for the whole of Lent.

No milk or butter and the two remaining meals measured out so that they weighed only a couple of ounces.

Compare this with the Muslim regime during Ramadan.

No food or drink from before dawn until 9pm each night.

And the Ramadan diet!

Surely, that must be a better and more penitential course?

Well, if one was to ask a nutritionist to compare the two fasts, the Christian one would win hands down.

It is positively unhealthy to ask the body to go without food and liquids for anything up to 18 or 19 hours a day over a lengthy period.
It is also bad for the body (and the soul) to gorge on food as many Muslims do before sunup and after sundown.

It does not just make it penitential, it makes it life threatening. Why?

Think of a Brain Surgeon on a Ramadan fast, or for that matter, a bus driver or tool cutter or a nuclear physicist. Without sufficient liquid intake (especially), the body and subsequently, the brain, begins to malfunction; it begins to commit one's actions to errors of judgement.

In short, the chances that you are going to kill or maim yourself or someone else increase greatly.

It was customary in every College that I worked in, to bar Muslim students from working with any form of potentially dangerous technology during Ramadan. They were a danger to themselves and to others around them.

Furthermore, College staff would be reminded that severe fasting is liable to bring on what can only be described as temper attacks, when a student would snap at another and then a row or even a fight would break out.

Imagine now that you are a visitor to a Muslim country during Ramadan.What you do not do is walk through the streets eating an ice cream or quaffing a coke. You would come under verbal and physical attack and, in some countries, you would actually be in breach of the law.

Neither do you walk near a mosque or any place where folk gather in groups, tensions are heightened and the atmosphere is volatile.

Even Turkey, which might be described as a moderate country in Muslim terms, is far from safe for the unwary traveller.

Yet many Muslims regard our Lent as nothing more than an effeminate joke.

Whereas, we believe, as always, that so much of Catholic teaching and practice comes down to sound common sense and that our duty is to fast and abstain responsibly and safely.

Fast hard, but not so hard that you place your life and the lives of
         others in danger.

Pray, the one thing that we can be liberal about in Lent

Alms, the third requirement of this period, give and give until it hurts

O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despondency, lust of power, and idle talk;

But grant rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to thy servant.

Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother; for blessed art Thou unto the ages of ages.



Ramadan - how can Muslims get it so wrong?

I know rather a lot of Muslims; one or two are even relatives, but not one of them appears to know precisely why they fast from dawn to dusk for the best part of a month each year.

"To know what it is like to be poor" is one response; "To please Allah" is another but they do not really stack up as being reasoned rational answers.

The official reason for such stringent fasting is that it aids one to become more spiritual, more humble and more obedient to God.

In reality it lets loose on society a large number of people who are temporariliy off balance; not quite sound.

Let me explain. Severe fasting over a lengthy period takes its toll on both the mental and physical condition of the person fasting. At College, all Arab engineering students were banned from using dangerous machinery during the month that it lasts. The potential for nasty accidents to occur was just too big a risk to take. Lecturing and support staff were instructed on how to calm down volatile young men who were prone to fly off the handle.

 Tempers fray when your last intake of food and water was, say, twelve hours ago (assuming a 4am start and a 4pm finish to the College day).

In addition, those Muslims who normally liked to smoke (forbidden but very common) quite often gave it up during Ramadan. Again, the results were very predictable.

Now you can take preventative action with students but just imagine, if you will, how many Muslim bus drivers, train drivers, brain surgeons and so on, there are in London alone. It would be interesting for an analysis to take place of road traffic accidents this month and a comparison made with previous non Ramadan periods.

But it's not just the safety aspect that renders Ramadan a dubious exercise; the rule is from dawn (pre light) until dusk (post light) and that is a long time in this country.

Pre dawn breakfast for one?

The wealthy Middle Eastern Arab families make an annual pilgrimage each year to either Great Britain or Switzerland. They depart their home countries at the end of May and return at the end of September. This is to escape the appalling heat.

However, when Ramadan falls in this period, they quickly nip back home and put up with the heat because the hours of daylight are considerably shorter in the Middle East and the fast is much easier to fulfil as a result.

For those British Muslims who are stuck back home in Blighty they resort to stuffing themselves full of food and drink at 3.30am and then await, camel like, until 9.30pm when they again consume meals of gargantuan proportions. I hardly think that such actions are pleasing to Allah. Nor are they very good for the constitution I suspect.

Contrast the Muslim and the Catholic styles of fasting; the Muslims fast to extremes often placing themselves and others at risk and interspersing periods of fast with periods of gluttony while Catholics fast enough to feel it and recognise it as just one form of penance.

And if you want evidence of just how short tempered the Muslim community can become during this period, then visit a Muslim country.

 I have learnt several things in this respect. Firstly, do not travel if you can possibly avoid it. Secondly, never go near a mosque. Thirdly, keep on the move and do not loiter anywhere and, fourthly, do not sit in the Hotel Restaurant window seat to eat your lunch!

And, finally, there are, apparently, seven Muslims living on the Orkney Islands (where the sun barely sets before it rises in the summer months). Have pity on those poor souls who must have to endure a fasting period of close to 24 hours!

FYI: Ramadan 2011 ends on August 30th