Here comes the month of Ramadan; the month of fasting! Today is 26 Shaaban 1442 AH. Are you all set for it? Are you prepared for the sacred month? This question is particularly pertinent given the current situation where prices of necessities of life continue to soar. In fact, each time I am told of the way marketers of daily essentials such as food products now increase prices of those commodities, I remember Surat al-Mutafifin (Qur’an 83). I remember those traders who are negligent of the fact that they shall be called to account on the day of resurrection.
One way to prepare for the coming Ramadan is to not wait for the eleventh hour of the day. If the crescent for the month of Ramadan takes eleven months before it appears, it means we should not wait till it is twenty-four hours to its appearance before we begin to prepare for our fasting exercise.
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Are you all set for fasting this year? Your response should be in the negative particularly if you owe your Creator or your brother an obligation since last year without fulfilling it. In other words, one way to properly prepare for the coming Ramadan is for you to discharge all your obligations, the spiritual, the social, the economic, the cultural and even the political before this year’s fasting begin. Not to do that is to become a student who proceeds to the examination hall with “forbidden documents and materials”.
In other words, dear brethren, a wrong way to prepare for Ramadan is to have unresolved disputes with your fellow Muslim brethren. Since Ramadan is first of all a spiritual exercise before being a communal or social one, since the locale of the spiritual is the human soul -the heart, and since anger, animosity, envy, hatred and all ill-feelings are diseases which assail the heart, corrupt it and render it unsuitable for spiritual re-awakening, it then becomes highly important that we empty our hearts of all these “spiritual viruses”. Thus, dear brother, endeavour to settle all existing disputes and issues with your fellow human beings, Muslims, Christians, and the other before the onset of Ramadan. Remember, dear Sister, that you should not expect your supplications to be granted while you unjustly sit on the right or rights of your neighbour, your sub-ordinates in the office, or even that of your husband and children. “Return the trusts to their owners…” that is the injunction of the Almighty in the Qur’an. Not to do this is to prepare wrongly for the coming Ramadan. Brethren, one other way by which a Muslim could prepare inappropriately for Ramadan is to leave a threat to his health unattended to. Since Ramadan is a month of action, it is incumbent on every mature Muslim who knows and believes that fasting is obligatory on him to seek every lawful means by which she would be in the best state of health before it begins. Brethren! Let us prepare for the month of Ramadan by asking the Almighty to forgive us and redeem our leaders in this country. In an hadith reported by al-Tabrani and which is classified as hasan by al-Albani, the Prophet is reported to have said: “Whoever seeks forgiveness for believing men and believing woman, the Almighty will write for him a good deed for each believing man and believing woman.” What is axiomatic in the above is that one important way to prepare for the coming Ramadan is to assume that the month could be the last for you and for me. As you are reading this, a soul is departing this world; moments before the onset of Ramadan, some creatures of the Almighty would transit to the great beyond. Muadh b. Jabal was in the presence of the Prophet one day when the latter asked: where are the believers in this assemblage? All the companions said: we are all believers. Then the Prophet asked: what is the evidence for your faith? Muadh b. Jabal said: “A pointer to my belief is that each time I take a step while walking I am certain that I may not be alive to take the next step”. Though we live with the certainty of the uncertain; the certainty of death whose time is uncertain, let us therefore prepare for the uncertain by doing that which is certain: righteous deeds.
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