A Time for Healing
By Sh. Hamza Yusuf
Countless Muslims scholars have discussed the condition of the heart and its various diseases that are related to character and habits. These scholars have suggested ways in which to cure these diseases, and invariably they speak of Ramadan as an excellent opportunity to cure ailments that hurt our morality and spirituality. Some of them follow.
• Miserliness (bukhl): This is hoarding money and refusing to spend on one’s family and the needy. And what better time than Ramadan to shed this malady! It is well known that the Prophet œ was the most generous of people, and in Ramadan he was even more generous. His Companions described him like a wind that bears gifts. Ramadan is a time in which the quality of generosity is easier to attain. Since miserliness depends on one’s eager love for the fleeting things of this world, Fasting slays this eager love and helps one to relocate the source of all blessings, that is, Allah. Love of the world is a disease that we wean ourselves of during Ramadan, since we voluntarily deprive ourselves of the pleasures of food, drink, and sexual intimacy.
• Ostentation or showing off (riyâ’): Showing off here is the terrible disease of doing something in order to impress others or gain their praise. The most abhorrent form of this is performing rites of worship for the sake of pleasing others. It is difficult to have ostentation in Ramadan for a couple of good reasons. Ritual Prayer is an open act, as is the Pilgrimage and even paying Charity (Zakât). Fasting, however, because it involves abstinence, is invisible. One can stare a person in the face and not know whether or not he is Fasting, which makes Fasting an impossible act to show before others. Also, because many people attend the mosque in Ramadan to perform extra devotional Prayers, a person prone to ostentation no longer feels so significant. You are one face among hundreds of faces.
• Heedlessness (ghafla): This is a refusal to acknowledge and receive what Allah has clearly shown us as excellent for our souls or as harmful. Ghafla is seeing the difference between the two as not important. A person afflicted with ghafla is one who is obsessed with the fleeting things of this world that diverts him from what is beneficial and everlasting. As such, heedlessness has little refuge in one’s mind and heart when they are busy with the remembrance of Allah and listening to the recitation of His Book, which are dominant activities of Ramadan.
• Boasting (fakhr) and arrogance (kibr): Boasting is a loathsome practice that universally sickens people. No one likes a boaster: the person who walks with a swagger; the person who cannot be in the company of other people without speaking about himself or drawing attention to what he has done; or the person who cannot help but try to gain rank by mentioning his or her ancestry or accomplishments. Allah reveals His dislike of bragging: Allah does not love the arrogant and boasting ones(Quran, 31:18, 57:23). Also, arrogance is thinking that you’re better than someone else. The most villainous beings in creation’s history were filled with arrogance and false pride: Satan, Pharaoh, the opponents of the Prophet œ, and many nefarious tyrants since. The Prophet œ warned against arrogance: “No one will enter Paradise who has an atom’s weight of arrogance in his heart.” These two qualities (boasting and arrogance) cannot survive a sincere engagement with Ramadan. How can they survive, while in Ramadan we admit our complete need of Allah and His generous provision? Who can engage in boasting when it becomes plain that all that we have is from Allah the Exalted and is not some mystic result of our own talents or some kind of privilege?
All of the blessings of Ramadan come with the obvious caveat: nothing is automatic. This is not the system that Allah placed in our lives and the world in which we live. Without effort and sincere trust, Ramadan can easily be just another 30 days in a year, even for those who Fast it, who mechanically deprive themselves without striving to reach deep into their souls for spiritual lessons and replenishment, and who then live as they have lived during the previous months of the year. One cannot help but notice a tragedy in this: Allah so generously opens portals in time, truly special opportunities for us to grow, learn, and build for our Hereafter, yet people turn away from it with casual notice and perfunctory interest.
This article is based in part on Hamza Yusuf’s tapes on “The Purification of the Heart.”