Ramzan: Month of Compassion or Aggression?

Every culture has its own specific ways to greet and celebrate a particular event. Pakistanis have their own ways to do this. And this greeting has also become a certain type of culture. All over the world Muslims observe holy month of Ramzan with religious devotion. This religious devotion again varies with culture but sometimes it becomes rather a deconstructive contamination of spirituality and a complete u-turn from the essence of the worship.



Ramzan in its essence brings an opportunity for Muslims to practice a devoted behavior of tolerance, compassion and submission. But, sadly, what is practiced and is observed has nothing to do with any of the objectives i.e. tolerance, compassion and submission. My friends call me a pessimist who extracts negativity out of everything. But, the way I feel and which is necessary to mention here is the need of corrective and preventive behavior. This can only be brought by identifying our mistakes. The social impact of ignored behaviors becomes tremendously devastating with the passage of time. Before the readers wonder, what I am talking about is, I should start with examples. Speaking entirely on the social dimension of our behaviors related to Ramzan, I will avoid any possible conflict with religion per se.

It has always been a surprise to me to realize that a month that is supposed to spend on a tolerant behavior regarding appetite is a month when there is everything in the town promoting otherwise. From the hunger provoking cooking shows to public display of food items in streets, the sources of “Gullotny” are all there. Irony in itself is that the major business in a fasting month is food. This behavior of faithful is rather a show of greed contrary to the show of tolerance.

At the end of a 12 to 18 hours long day of fasting, there is another public display of intolerance in the streets: loud honking of horns in jammed traffic, people fighting with each other and shopkeepers selling the goods at 3x times cost. The inevitable sense of self-righteousness seems dominating the souls. The first objective of the Ramzan seems at high risk of disregard.

The extensive and unnecessary shopping of different food items lead to inflation which in turn leads to the trouble for the underprivileged who are supposed to be sympathize with and shown compassion to, in the holy month. Several Hadiths emphasize the importance of this particular point which is termed as one of the important objectives of the holy month: to produce a compassionate thought in believers towards underprivileged by remaining hungry for hours. This objective is also compromised.

The third and vital aim of the holy month is neither seen to be fulfilling. Submission is an ultimate display of humbleness and devotion to the magnificence of Almighty. Whereas, what I have observed in suburban and rural areas of Pakistan, specifically KP is not indeed a submissive welcome to the holy month. In fact, the reason for writing this piece is an experience of this welcome on the first evening of this Ramzan. The mountains of my hometown kept on echoing with air-firing for whole two hours when the sighting of the moon was announced on TV. Taking pride in firing more and more rounds of bullets and using respective loudspeakers of the mosques at maximum, during night, are the behaviors which tend to crush the concept of humbleness and submission.

I acknowledge that I do not have any right to judge the behaviors of people and base my conclusions on assuming that these behaviors are not a part of culture and are not well-intentioned. But I hope that we can realize, prevent and correct the extent of the spiritual contamination by acknowledging the fact that some behaviors are so adamant that they are deconstructive towards the essence of a particular virtue. This way many social implications of this transgression can be saved.