Last year was the first year that I honestly said “I think I’m over fasting.” I felt frail, unattractive, and unproductive. I would get back from a day of work where I struggled to stay awake, farting heinous, irregular farts and praying to just be left alone in my wretchedness. Postgrad life is hard enough on its own, so why on earth would I handicap myself in this way? I told my older sister this and she seemed disappointed. I found pretty much all the wrong ways to justify giving up on it, that the Quran was homophobic, that Islam left me out anyway. I've only recently begun trying to articulate the fallacy of this, though many others do it better than I could.
A year later, Ramadan is on its way back, arriving a little earlier than the white man’s calendar expects, as always. I’m excited, and I want to try to explain why
I always felt somewhat self-righteous about my fasting, but it actually wasn’t until I met a black Christian girl in college who fasted with me, that I learned some new language to validate a ritual that today, actually feels pretty radical. She framed it within a bigger story about consumption that I hadn’t seen mapped on to Ramadan before, and it clicked: “America is about ME and NOW.” Since then, I’ve been trying to craft an understanding of the fast as an interruption of this.
It isn’t just about not eating and not having sex, though I think these are important sites for that interruption. Pretty much anywhere, but especially in the U.S., the way we eat relies on cheap and abusive labor, much (or even a majority) of which is done by women who also bear the burden of unpaid domestic work. I sometimes like to think of sex as another kind of consumption, another structure we sometimes can’t help but adorn with misogyny, racism, and other oppressive power dynamics disguised as innocently aestheticized “preferences” and fetishes. Of course, we generally participate in these systems whether we want to or not. But it fills me with power to say “Actually, no, I’m doing fine without these things.” I literally have to say this things all day because everyone thinks I’m crazy for doing it. But for reasons that have evolved over time, I’ve been doing it for over ten years, and I’m still here!
Traditionally, people who are fasting don’t just stop eating, they prepare food for the poor while they’re at it. Fasting is about humility, it’s about leaving for others all the things you know very well you can do without. That’s redistribution! What if Ramadan were about rejoicing in resource redistribution, so that everyone is better off? That’s something we can enjoy and celebrate.
But fasting is more than just this! It’s a slowing down. It’s being so tired that you can’t help but decenter yourself, that your life is no longer about the things you consume and the things you produce, but creating a practice out of aiming for something more important than ME, because so much of our work and play revolves around an economy of ME. So this year, I’m not going to lament the lost productivity, or the lost opportunity to invest an inordinate amount of labor into my one finite, transient body. I’m going to do my best to stop planning MY future for a while. I’m going to do some cooking so my mom can relax and pray. I might even pray myself. I’m going to make eye contact. I’m going to let my muscles atrophy, because they won’t last forever, and I don’t need them anyway.
But fasting is more than just this! It’s a slowing down. It’s being so tired that you can’t help but decenter yourself, that your life is no longer about the things you consume and the things you produce, but creating a practice out of aiming for something more important than ME, because so much of our work and play revolves around an economy of ME. So this year, I’m not going to lament the lost productivity, or the lost opportunity to invest an inordinate amount of labor into my one finite, transient body. I’m going to do my best to stop planning MY future for a while. I’m going to do some cooking so my mom can relax and pray. I might even pray myself. I’m going to make eye contact. I’m going to let my muscles atrophy, because they won’t last forever, and I don’t need them anyway.
This year I welcome Ramadan as a disruption during which we can bring more people into this abundance by doing the kinds of work that are undervalued and erased by capitalism. I’m going to give people my time, I’m going to listen, I’m going to give, I’m going to wait, and wait, and I will not configure a space for these things on my resume. These things are fasting.
I don’t think fasting is about self-deprivation or chaste endurance. Fasting is when you take in the people and love around you and say “This is enough, alhamdoulilah.” At the same time, we work to make sure that marginalized and oppressed people can say the same thing. Saha Ramdankoum.
