Dear monotheists, polytheists, atheists and anyone else I've forgotten. Here is a reflection on the spiritual side of Ramadan. You need not believe everything you read in the Herald Sun or an ISIS press release.
Islam isn't just about armed jihad and acquiring multiple stroppy mothers-in-law and violence against infant genitalia. Islam does have a spiritual side, and Ramadan is an inherently spiritual month, full of prayer and fasting and more fasting and more prayer and hardly any horizontal bedtime action.
The theory behind all this deprivation is that if you're hungry and thirsty and sex-deprived between sunrise and sunset for an entire lunar month, you'll gain a spiritual high that should last you the rest of the year.
There are plenty of Muslims, however, who don't fast for perfectly legitimate reasons under sharia (as in religious law, not some secret recipe to turn the galaxy into a Milky Caliphate). There are also plenty of Muslims who couldn't give a flying felafel about the sharia and are happy to pass their lives only fasting when a doctor or pathologist tells them to.
I belong to the former category. I fasted all my life (or rather, since I was about ten years old when mum told me it was compulsory). Then at age 32 I succumbed to a nasty illness which required medicine twice a day on a full stomach. My doctor said fasting would be bad for my health. My God and my Prophet were also happy to oblige.
Which makes me feel like I'm on the very edge of Ramadan. While everyone is getting high in fasting, I'm secretly munching on or guzzling down something. I miss the spiritual crescendo that comes with a late afternoon's empty stomach. Without that high, all the other observances of Ramadan — collective breaking of fast (iftar), late night prayers (tarawih) etc. — feel almost meaningless.
When I'm at a South Asian iftar party, I don't feel the same joy I used to at satiating my physical and spiritual hunger by stuffing my face with samosas and chicken korma and biryani and glass upon glass of rose-flavoured milk and enough soft drink to sustain burping for the rest of the night.
The Prophet used to break his fast with some dates and water. The 21st century middle class Aussie Mossie gorges on rendang and shawarma and oily Bosnian pies that are guaranteed to bring life to a cardiac surgeon's bank