Muslim faithful across the world, Ghana inclusive, yesterday ended a month-long period of fasting – one of the five cannons of the religion.
It has been a gruelling spiritual exercise but as a ritual underpinned by discipline and full of dos and don’ts, the benefits are adequately contained in the Muslim Holy Scriptures of Quran: the stress and the ordeal of abstinence from food and bodily pleasures from dawn to dusk are laden with challenges for the body. That, after all, is the essence of fasting along religious lines.
Those who fasted – if they did it adhering to the laws underpinning the religious exercise – will surely experience a spiritual exaltation, the benefits of which can impact positively on their lives and the nation.
As a month of charity, we have observed how this spirit of giving dominated the activities of Muslims: even the end of the exercise was characterised by the provision of food to the needy – an obligation on all Muslims with the means to do so.
It is our position that members of the faith would, now that they have completed this period of purification, reflect upon their lives and how to continue the goodness which the Ramadan month bestowed upon them.
We are totally against the limitation of the goodness which the faithful exhibited throughout the Ramadan month. Extending these beyond this period is good for the individual and society at large.
The youth in the Islamic communities of our urban areas have been stereotyped by many; and the reason for the aspersion is not too difficult to establish.
Recently, some youth at Newtown, Accra, descended upon teachers of the St Joseph’s School and beat them up. Many who heard about it condemned it and prayed that the youth in these parts of the nation’s capital would embrace good conduct and decency: two attributes of both Islam and Christianity.
Were members of the faith to adhere to the tenets of Islam, such stereotyping would be completely useless. Regrettably, some youth of the faith ignore the sermons of the clerics and relish the unruliness which is associated with Islam by the ignorant. Let them not allow themselves to be used by bad politicians for dirty operations. Let them decline any invitation to engage in election operations by recalling the lessons of the Ramadan month.
Islam, a faith hinged upon peace and the total submission to the will of God, should be the last religion to have its youth engage in unruly conduct.
Today as Muslims make merry, there is no doubt that some youth would engage in activities which negate the essence of the month-long fasting, indiscipline which Islamic clerics have often preached against.
Merriment at the end of the fasting should be based on discipline and good conduct devoid of anything that can endanger the lives of merry-makers and others.
The sitting in the booths of cars and over-speeding motorbikes are both features of Sallah day like today. Let the youth not in the name of merrymaking lose the blessing they attracted during the Ramadan fasting and even risk suffering injuries. Barka da Sallah.