Marhaban ya Ramadhan

Ramadhan will be knocking on our door in less than 4 days time, brings with it so many 'Barakah' to be treasured and pleasured. May it bring lots of Nur to our heart and into our life. 

During ‘heyday’ as a kid, not much can be taken away or learned from the holy month of Ramadhan, thou the month was something that we are looking forward to. It was a period of exciting and exhilarating with mercun, bunga api, main polis sentri dan segala bagai...almaklumlah Setan2 dah kena tambat, so kurang takut main malam2. Fasting can be ¼ a day (dikenali sebagai posa yang yuk), ½ day or full day depending heavily on how we dealt with lust and desire for food. Thus, parents usually allow their kids to play whole day long just to deviate their minds to this lust and desire, which eventually lead to a very minimum stamina towards the end of the fasting. Udah ghope nak separuh mampuih bila duk nengok ayo sirap kaler merah masa nunggu  masuk waktu Magerib..

Over time, you’ll learn that Ramadhan is not only about not to eat, not to look, not to do things that you are not supposed to do, et cetera but obviously it is more than that. It is mainly for the purpose of attaining ‘takwa’ i.e. piousness, devoutness, the feeling of fear to God. Fasting is between you and your Creator, only between the two of you. Thus, it’s really shape up your attitude, your mind, your fear, simply because no one knows whether you are fasting or not, except for Allah. It’s all about takwa that spiritually and mentally force you to continue fasting in the way that it should be.

I was in US in early 90s and I’ve experienced fasting in a society that will not pressure you to fast, they not even know what fasting is all about. Again, takwa play its pivotal role whether you have the inner strength to shape up or shift out. Allah says in Al-Baqarah, 183 “O you who believe, Observing the fasting is prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you, so that you may attain piety.”  There are two phases involved i.e. the Believer and those who attain piety. Fasting in the month of Ramadhan, as prescribed to us and doing it in the way it should be, is the linkage between both of them.

To all of us, let’s do this Ramadhan with our utmost best simply because we could never be certain whether or not we would live to see the next one.

Marhaban ya Ramadhan..