Among all the good deeds and spiritual practices that human beings can do, or are commanded by God to perform in order to gain nearness to God and His Acceptance, God (swt) singles out the primacy of the Fast. God states this through the sacred utterance (Hadith Qudsi) of the Prophet (s):
“All the good deeds of the children of Adam are for themselves, except the Fast. It (Fasting) is for Me and I shall reward it.” (Found in Bukhari and Muslim)
In this Prophetic statement is the great subtlety and secret of the uniqueness of the Fast in contrast to all other modes or acts of worship. According to this Hadith Qudsi, there is an element of (good) self-interest on every righteous deed, from ritual prayer, alms giving, to the pilgrimage. That self interest is of course salvation and attaining the pleasure of God, even service to others. But the degree of divine acceptance of such righteous and virtuous deeds is dependent upon our degree of sincerity and presence with God, in these spiritual practices and religious rites. This understandable self interest has much to do with the sense of doer-ship involved from the human side of these sacred rituals.
However, the Fast is unique in this regard. There is essentially no doer-ship, as the Fast is considered a “non-act”. In other words, the sole intention is to abstain for a given period of time, for God's sake, from doing certain acts which are necessary in some way for our physical existence. Because of this abstinence for periods of time from essential life-sustaining activities, this intention as a non-action is fully accepted by God. For God knows there would be no other reason to withdraw from that which sustains life, except for the sake of the One who is the Giver of Life and Eternally Subsisting (Al-Hayy, Al-Qayyum). This is why God emphatically states “Fasting is Mine”.
Ironically, in the non-act of the Fast, there is no doing on Man’s part and God's part. For we are simply abstaining, which is a non-act, and God is simply Accepting ownership of this non-act (“Fasting is Mine”). This is more appreciated if we discover by direct experience (dhawq) and witness that Fast by non-doing, somehow returns us to our pure being, which reflects in its own way the Purity of God’s Being.
In other words, God and Man do not ‘become’ anything in the fast. Rather, God and Man ‘meet’ in the Fast, through God’s Pure Being and Man’s non-doing. By simply and purely ‘being’ as the Fast, God ‘remains’ HimSelf, and human beings realize their nothingness before God’s Being (Wujud) or Self (Dhat). It is truly only in Fasting that God as such, in His pure and rich Being, meets Man as such, in his essential nothingness and poverty. “And God is the Rich and you are the poor”, as so powerfully stated in the Qur’an (47:38).
This is perhaps why God states “Fasting is Mine”. Fasting can only belong to God without acquisition (bila kasbiyya) as Nothing actually occurs or transfers in the Fast between the human and the Divine, as the Fast is a non-act. God’s pure Being mirrors Man’s non-doing. It is here, in the fast that the human intention of not doing for God, is met directly by God’s singular Acceptance, even Ownership (“Fasting is for Me”).
In other words, by being and enduring nothing through the Fast, we realize sincerity before God who is the Source of our Life. The mystery of the Fast lies in its nothingness and sincerity as the fast is nothing other there than pure intention on the human side and pure acceptance on the Divine side, by definition. And God accepts and claims that for Himself, for no worship or ‘deed’ is more Lovable to Him than the Fast. The Fast, by its formless form, singles out God Alone without human attribution. He Loves our nothingness because He is Everything (swt).
“The intention of the believer is greater than his action”~ Hadith
“And God is the Rich, and you are the poor” ~Qur’an 47:38
*The title of this blog is inspired by the beautiful opening passage of “Understanding Islam”, by Frithjof Schuon: “Islam is the meeting of God as such and man as such”.
