It’s often said: Muslims fast, Christians don’t. But what is really the case? To understand this, we need to define what fasting means, according to Islam and according to the Bible.

Fasting according to the Koran and Hadiths

It wasn’t until 2 AH that Muhammad introduced the Ramadan fast by virtue of a “revelation” (Sura 2.185).¹. At first, Muslims could dispense with fasting on certain days, provided they compensated by feeding at least one poor person for each day not fasted (Sura 2.183-184).². Then, very quickly, it was imposed on everyone as a duty, with the exception of the sick, indisposed or pregnant women, travellers and combatants on the “path of Allah”.

The Arabic word “fast” means “to abstain from”. During Ramadan, we abstain from eating, drinking and sexual relations during the day. However, from sunset to sunrise, everyone is free to enjoy what they have denied themselves during the day.

The importance of fasting

There are many reasons why this practice is absolutely vital. Ramadan fasting is one of the five pillars of Islam³ and commemorates the revelation of the Koran by the angel Gabriel to Muhammad. Failing to observe it is as serious as failing to perform the ritual prayer or refusing to pronounce the shahada (Muslim confession of faith). If Islamic law is strictly applied in a Muslim country, such an offense makes the non-fasting person a heretic liable to the death penalty.

While Muslims are obliged to observe the Ramadan fast on a fixed date, there are other forms of fasting. These are voluntary and take place on certain days of the week or in certain months of the year. These fasts have a supererogatory character, i.e. they are added to what is required by ordinary piety to increase its merits.

Whether it’s the ritual fast of Ramadan or the supererogatory fasts, Muslims who observe them aspire to satisfy three fundamental needs.

Fasting to atone for certain faults

Fasting can be practised as a means of righting a moral wrong. For example, the Sharia requires a consecutive two-month fast from a person who has involuntarily caused the death of a Muslim (Sura 4.92).⁴who has broken the fast (of Ramadan) without a valid reason (by having sexual relations, eating or drinking during the day) or who has repudiated his wife using a pagan formula (Sura 58.3-4).⁵.

A person who does not honor an oath made to God must observe a three-day fast (Sura 5.89), and one who has killed game during Ramadan, depending on the value of the animal, is subject to a fast of between three and ten days (Sura 5.95).

Those who compare their wives to the backs of their mothers, and then go back on what they said, must free a slave before they have any (conjugal) contact with their wives… But he who cannot find the means must then fast for two consecutive months before he has any (conjugal) contact with his wife. But if he can’t do that either, then let him feed sixty poor people”.

Fasting to become better at obeying Allah

Every sincere believer aspires to develop certain moral qualities and, according to Islam, fasting is the preferred means of doing so. Indeed, suffering hunger and thirst enables the fasting believer to experience first-hand what the poor endure. In this way, he can learn compassion and a spirit of social solidarity towards them. The renunciations imposed by fasting also enable the believer to focus on God and grow in his love for the Creator.

Muslims are also aware of what hinders their piety. So they fast to arm themselves against the evil inclinations of their nature.⁶ by strengthening their will. This asceticism, it is asserted, frees those who practice it from the passions that defile the spirit. It also purifies their hearts of futile or impure preoccupations. A Hadith tells men who are unable to marry: “He who is unable to marry, let him fast. It dulls his ardor”.

As a saying attributed to Mohammed states, “Fasting preserves from Hell, like a shield in battle. Whoever fasts a day for the love of God will be kept away from the Fire by the distance of seventy years”. As for Muslim scholars, they are so convinced of the benefits of fasting that they consider that “allowing more than four days to go by without fasting hardens the heart, engenders bad habits and opens the door to passions”.

See article: Some little-known aspects of Ramadan fasting https://iqri.org/quelques-aspects-meconnus-du-jeune-du-ramadan/

There is a third reason for fasting, to which Islam attaches the utmost importance.

Fasting for merit

In this respect, the Ramadan fast is the best of all the months in the Muslim calendar. Whoever fasts with faith during Ramadan, expecting divine reward, receives forgiveness for his sins. On the night of Ramadan, demons and jinn are chained, the gates of Hell are closed and those of Paradise are opened.

Any good deed performed during Ramadan earns its author a very special merit. The Hadiths explicitly state. ” The best charity is that performed during Ramadan”.” Whoever rises to pray during the nights of Ramadan, with faith and counting on the divine reward, God forgives his past faults”.“An ‘Umra (small pilgrimage to Mecca) during Ramadan is worth a great pilgrimage in my (Mohammed’s) company”.

But of all the good deeds that can be performed during fasting, jihad is by far the most excellent, as its purpose is to spread Islam throughout the world during the month when Muslims commemorate the revelation of the Koran.

What is the relationship between the Ramadan fast and jihad?

During this fast, the Muslim must devote all his efforts to observing the prescriptions of the Koran. This is the primary and most important goal of the fast. The highest precept of Islam is jihad.⁷. It must therefore be given a special place during Ramadan. It’s no coincidence that the same Sura mentions Ramadan and jihad, in the same context.

Muhammad, the model par excellence for every Muslim, launched the Battle of Badr on the 17th day of Ramadan. It was also during Ramadan that he conquered Mecca. His disciples and descendants followed in his footsteps, waging decisive battles during the month of Ramadan: in Syria, Egypt, Spain, during the Crusades and right up to the ^20th century, when the Arab countries launched the Yom Kippur War during the month of Ramadan.⁸.

Why does the West hide this relationship?

The strategists behind the Islamization of the West understand this very well: such a link between the Ramadan fast and jihad cannot be revealed to a Western society that is told that Islam is a peaceful religion. This is why the Muslim Brotherhood had the ingenious idea of presenting this jihad in another form: spiritual jihad.⁹. They took a verse from the Koran that prescribes Muslims to purify their souls and falsely associated it with jihad. This concept of spiritual jihad has been so widely picked up and disseminated by the media and advocates of peaceful Islam that it has been wrongly imposed as a reality of Islam. However, Muslims themselves, particularly in Muslim countries, recognize that spiritual jihad does not exist, either in the Koran or in Muhammad’s Sunna.

In view of the above, it’s easy to understand why some Islamists are calling on their followers to wage jihad during the month of Ramadan. We can also better understand their true intention when they speak of jihad.

If this is fasting according to Islam, what does the Bible have to say about it?

Fasting according to the Bible

Unlike Muslim tradition, the Torah of Moses makes no mention of fasting in the religious practice of the patriarchs. Adam, Noah or Abraham may have fasted, but if they did, the Bible doesn’t consider the event significant enough to mention it. There is one exception to this: when Moses went up to Mount Sinai with the stone tablets on which “the Lord wrote… the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments”, the text specifies that “Moses remained there with the Lord forty days and forty nights, without eating or drinking”. The context, however, makes it clear that this was not a ritual fast, but a particularly solemn occasion during which Moses had no leisure to eat or drink (Ex. 34:28).

Fasting for personal needs

In the Old Testament, all allusions to fasting describe serious individual or national circumstances. For example, when the child born of his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba was dying, David fasted, begging God to spare his life. In the psalms, he alludes to other circumstances when he felt the need to fast. In Psalm 69.11, he declares, “I have wept and fasted” , and in 109.24, “My knees are weakened by the effect of fasting”. When Queen Esther decided to approach Emperor Xerxes at the risk of her life to ask him to prevent the annihilation of her people, she called on the Jews of Susa to give up eating and drinking for three days, a fast to which she herself submitted (Esther 4.16).

In Israel, certain people invested with recognized authority could “proclaim a fast” of indeterminate duration, because it was not ritualistic and depended on circumstances. We read, for example, that King Jehoshaphat, seeing a coalition of enemy armies coming, “took fright and decided to consult the Lord. He proclaimed a fast for all Judah, and the Judeans gathered together to implore the Lord’s help” (2Chronicles 20.3-4).

Fasting to meet a national need

At any time, kings and priests could call on the Israelites to fast when it came to expecting God’s protection (Estras 8.21-23), confessing their sins (Nehemiah 9.1-2) or expressing repentance: “But even now, the Lord declares, return to me, return with all your heart with fasting, with tears and lamentations. Tear your heart, not your garments, and return to the Lord, who is your God” (Joel 2.12-13).

Commemorative fasts

Although God never made fasting a law, the Israelites did establish periods of national fasting. After the capture of Jerusalem and the transfer of its population to Babylon, the deportees decided to observe four annual fasts to commemorate the various moments of this tragedy. But the prophet Zechariah gave them the following message: “This is what the Lord of heavenly hosts says: The fasts of the fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth months will be changed for the people of Judah into a day of rejoicing, a day of gladness and joyful feasts.” (Zechariah 8:19). With his words, he announced their future return to Jerusalem, and the hope of a new life characterized by the joy of their return to God.

The risks of fasting

The practice of voluntary fasting has led some to believe that God sees some merit in it. Yet, eight centuries before our era, he declared through the prophet Isaiah: “The fast that pleases me is that which consists in loosening the bonds of wickedness, untying the straps of every bondage, setting free all those who are oppressed and breaking every kind of yoke. It is to share your bread with the hungry, and offer hospitality to the homeless poor, to give clothing to the naked, not to turn away from your neighbor” (Isaiah 58:6-7). In other words, God calls his people to renounce evil and do good, rather than proclaiming fasts that only maintain the pride of those who observe them.

To sum up, in the Old Testament, fasting is a practice that is imposed on individuals or on the whole people in serious circumstances, but it never has any value in itself. Fasting is beneficial only insofar as it accompanies and supports the believer’s return to God.

See also Three biblical reasons for fasting (John Stott)

Jesus leaves his disciples free to fast or not

This is what the whole of the New Testament makes clear. Jesus did not institute the forty days of complete fasting that preceded the beginning of his ministry as an obligation for all his disciples. Quite the contrary! He did not ask them to fast, unlike John the Baptist (Matthew 9:14-15). He was not afraid to mingle with people and eat and drink with them. What’s more, he denounced the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, who fasted ostentatiously on Mondays and Thursdays (Luke 18.12), and advised those who wished to do so to wash their faces and perfume their heads so that no one would know they were fasting (Matthew 6.16-18).

Like the believers of the Old Testament, the disciples of Jesus fasted either for very solemn or perilous situations, or to wage a particularly intense spiritual battle. To his disciples who had failed to cast out a demon, Jesus says: “This kind of demon can only be cast out by prayer and fasting” (Matthew 17.21).

What fasting is not for Jesus’ disciples

In addition to these generalities, it should be pointed out that, unlike what the Ramadan fast represents for Muslims, fasting as practiced by followers of Jesus is not a means of atoning for certain faults, becoming better or acquiring merit with God.

Isaiah bluntly reminds us of the state of human nature: “We are all like unclean things; all our righteousness is like soiled linen. We are all withered like a leaf; our iniquities carry us away like the wind” (Isaiah 64.5). This is why God’s covenant with Moses, the Ten Commandments, was powerless to free mankind from the dominion of sin. God gave it to his people with the intention of teaching them that they needed a new Covenant. And this new Covenant God made for all men through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

How Jesus favorably disposes of God to his disciples

By accepting to bear the curse that God pronounced against the sin of the first man (Ge 2.16-17; 3.17-19), Jesus frees everyone who believes in him from the need to atone for their own sins. What’s more, the Spirit that God causes to dwell in the disciple’s heart teaches him to fight his evil inclinations and grow in the likeness of Jesus. Finally, there’s no need for the disciple to seek merit from God, since Jesus has taken care of that. The disciples understand that “it is by grace that we are saved, through faith. It doesn’t come from us. It’s God’s gift. It is not by works, so that no one may boast” (cf. Ephesians 2:8).

Jesus thus unites in himself all the merits that God demands of a man. For those who believe in Jesus, God forgives their sins, calls them “sons” and “daughters” of God, and teaches them to lead a life in the likeness of Jesus.

So it’s not for lack of piety that Jesus’ disciples don’t fast. It’s because they have found in Jesus what others seek in abstinence. For them, the joy and freedom of salvation has replaced the constraint and contrition of fasting.

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