For example, a monarch may declare certain days to be festivals during his reign, or perhaps once a year, either on his accession to the throne or on some other days that  reflect  a  glittering  manifestation  of  his  sovereignty.  On  those  occasions  he favours his subjects, not within the compass of his laws generally but with his special bounties and favours through his unveiled presence and his wondrous activities. He favours with his especial regard and attention those of his nation who are completely loyal and worthy .

In the same way, the All-Glorious Monarch of eighteen thousand worlds, who is the Sovereign of Pre-Eternity and Post-Eternity, revealed in Ramadan the illustrious decree of the All-Wise Qur’an, which looks to the eighteen thousand worlds. It is a requirement of wisdom, then, that Ramadan should be like special divine festival, a dominical display, and a spiritual gathering. Since Ramadan is such festival, God has commanded man to fast, in order to disengage him to a degree from base, animal activities.

The most excellent fasting is to make the human senses and organs, such as the eyes, ears, heart, and thoughts, fast together with the stomach. That is, to withdraw them from unlawful things and from trivia, and to urge each of them to their particular worship.  For  example,  to  ban  the  tongue  from  lying,  back-biting,  and  obscene language and to make it fast; and to busy it with such activities as reciting the Qur’an, praying,  glorifying  God’s  Names,  asking  for  God’s  blessings  for  the  Prophet Muhammad (Upon whom be blessings and peace), and seeking forgiveness for sins; and for example, to prevent the eyes looking at members of the opposite sex outside the stipulated degrees of kinship, and the ears from hearing harmful things, and to use the eyes to take lessons and the ears to listen to the truth and to the Qur’an, is to make other organs fast too. As a matter of fact, since the stomach is the largest factory, when  it  has  an  enforced  holiday  from  work  through  fasting,  the  other  small workshops are made to follow it easily.

E i g h t h  P o i n t

One of the many instances of wisdom  in Ramadan  from the point of view of man’s personal life is as follows:

It is a healing physical and spiritual diet of the most important kind. When man’s instinctual soul eats and drinks just as it pleases, it is both harmful for man’s physical life  from  the  medical  point  of  view,  and  when  it  hurls  itself  on  everything  it encounters whether licit or illicit, it quite simply poisons his spiritual life. Further, it is difficult for such a soul to obey the heart and the spirit; it wilfully takes the reins into its own hands and then man cannot ride it, it rather rides man.