The Time of the Body

15. Ṣawm

The largest-scale collective dietary regulation in the world.

What it is

During the month of Ramaḍān, from dawn to sunset:

• No food
• No liquid — and this is the hard part; not even water
• No smoking
• No sexual intercourse

And in addition, explicitly: restraint of the tongue, anger and gaze. The tradition repeats that fasting that is only abstention from food is not fasting.

The scale

Ramaḍān follows a lunar calendar, so it moves approximately eleven days earlier each year relative to the solar.

So, in a span of about thirty-three years, it traverses the entire cycle of seasons.

And this has real consequence: a Muslim in Scandinavia may, depending on the year, fast ten hours or twenty.

The exceptions — and they are extensive

The system provides, as elsewhere:

• Sick — does not fast; makes up later
• Traveller — the same
• Pregnant and nursing — exempt; differences between schools on make-up or ransom
• Menstruation — does not fast; makes up (chapter 8)
• Elderly or chronically ill who can never make up — does not fast and does not make up; instead feeds a poor person for each day (fidya)
• Child — not obligated

The principle is explicit: God does not wish difficulty.

And the critical, which is overlooked: it is not starvation, it is shift

Ramaḍān is not a month of deprivation. It is a month of rearrangement.

• The iftār, the sunset meal, is almost always communal
• The suḥūr, the meal before dawn, sets a different sleep schedule
• The night prayers (tarāwīḥ) are added
• Markets, work hours, television, social life are rearranged across entire countries

And the zakāt al-fiṭr, obligatory alms before the feast, ensures that the poor eat at the end too.

That is: an entire social system changes rhythm for a month — and does so on the basis of the moon.

The scientific picture — with tiers

What appears relatively stable:

• Modest weight loss during the month, largely regained after
• Changes in lipid profiles, with heterogeneous results between studies
• Change in circadian rhythm and sleep pattern — this is consistently documented

What is uncertain: The many studies on inflammation markers, insulin resistance and metabolic health are small, heterogeneous and often contradictory. And the comparison with modern “intermittent fasting” is misleading: the latter allows water. The restriction of liquids is an entirely different physiological condition.

What is real risk — chapter 27.

And the great night

Laylat al-Qadr, within the last ten nights, is considered the most important night of the year. And many spend these ten days in iʿtikāf — withdrawal inside the mosque, where they sleep and remain.

It is the closest the mainstream has to ascetic isolation — and it is characteristically limited to ten days and within the community, not in the desert.

16. Ḥalāl and ḥarām

The categories

Food — like every act — is classified into five legal categories, and this is worth saying because it is usually presented as binary:

The vast majority of things belong to the neutral. The basic legal principle for foodstuffs is that everything is permitted unless there is an explicit prohibition — and the prohibitions are few.

The prohibitions

• Pork and its derivatives
• Blood
• Animals that died without slaughter
• Animals slaughtered in another’s name
• Alcohol and every intoxicant
• And, with school differences, carnivores with canines, raptors, certain seafood

The slaughter

The dhabīḥa requires: a swift cut severing trachea, oesophagus and the major vessels with a very sharp instrument; invocation of the name; and full exsanguination.

The animal must not see the instrument or another animal being slaughtered; it is not slaughtered hungry or thirsty.

And there is serious contemporary disagreement — within the community — about prior stunning: some authorities accept it if reversible and the animal would die from the cut; others reject it. Legislation differs by country.

And the deeper rule

There is a principle more important than the lists:

Food must be ḥalāl and ṭayyib — permitted and good, pure, beneficial.

And a second: the origin of the money matters. Food bought with unlawful earnings is considered problematic, however permissible it is in itself.

That is: food is judged not only by what it is, but by how it got there.

And overeating

There is a clear tradition against overeating, with the known formulation of three parts of the stomach: one for food, one for water, one for breath.

And explicit disapproval of waste.

The goal is not abstinence. It is measure — and it is, again, chapter 3.

17. Iḥrām

The most striking bodily state of the system.

What it is

Before entering the sacred area for the pilgrimage, the pilgrim enters the state of iḥrām — “consecration”.

The procedure: ghusl, grooming, and then:

The man wears two simple white garments, unsewn. One around the waist, one on the shoulder. Nothing stitched. The head uncovered. Sandals.

The woman wears her usual clothes, with the face and hands uncovered.

The prohibitions

In the state of iḥrām, the following are forbidden:

• Cutting hair or nails
• Perfume — and this is the strictest
• Sexual intercourse and contracting marriage
• Hunting and killing animals
• Cutting vegetation within the sacred area
• Argument and insult
• Sewn clothes, for men

And what the clothing does

Two unsewn white garments carry no information.

They do not declare country, class, profession, wealth, age, fashion. The king and the labourer are visually indistinguishable.

And it is no coincidence that this is essentially the same clothing as the shroud: the dead is wrapped in white unsewn garments (chapter 18).

That is: the pilgrimage is performed dressed as you will be buried.

And the tradition itself makes the connection explicitly: the pilgrimage is a rehearsal of the final gathering.

The scale

The pilgrimage gathers, in recent years, over two million people simultaneously — and the lesser one, year-round, millions more.

It is the largest annual gathering of people on the planet with a unified bodily discipline.

And it has produced significant crowd-management problems, with tragic incidents of crush — the worst in 1990 and 2015 — that led to extensive changes in infrastructure, scheduling and flow.

I note it because it is part of the reality, as are the health problems that mass numbers create: the pilgrimage is one of the most studied events in the epidemiology of mass gatherings.

18. The thresholds: birth and death

At birth

• The adhān, the call to prayer, is whispered in the right ear of the newborn — and in some practices the second form of it in the left
• Taḥnīk — a little softened date on the palate
• On the seventh day: naming, shaving of the hair and alms equal to its weight in silver, and sacrifice of an animal (ʿaqīqa) that is shared
• Breastfeeding is set in the text as two full years — and from this comes milk kinship (riḍāʿa): children who nursed from the same woman are considered relatives and cannot marry each other

Circumcision

khitān — for boys. It belongs to the acts of fiṭra (chapter 4). The legal designation varies: obligatory by some schools, strongly recommended by others. The age varies greatly by region.

And here a clear distinction must be made, because it is systematically confused:

Female genital mutilation is not an Islamic injunction.

It is a pre-Islamic practice of specific geographic regions — chiefly north-eastern Africa and parts of West Africa and Asia — that is practised also by non-Muslim populations of the same regions, and is absent from the vast majority of the Muslim world, including the largest Muslim countries.

Significant Islamic authorities have issued rulings against it, and there is a wide campaign of elimination with the participation of religious leaders.

It is a geographic and not a religious practice — and the confusion of the two harms both understanding and the elimination efforts.

At death

The sequence is clear, quick and extremely bodily:

1. Ghusl — the body is washed, by people of the same sex, often relatives. The dead is not handed over to professionals
2. Kafan — wrapped in simple white unsewn garments; three for the man, five for the woman by common practice
3. Ṣalāt al-janāza — a prayer performed standing, without bending and without prostration
4. Burial as quickly as possible — ideally the same day
5. In the earth, without a coffin where permitted, on the side, turned toward Mecca
6. The grave remains simple — there is explicit disapproval of funerary monuments, though practice varies widely

Cremation is forbidden.

And the connection

Note the symmetry with chapter 17:

White, unsewn garments. Without jewellery, without perfume, without indication of status. The same clothing for the pilgrimage and for the burial.

And the speed, simplicity and participation of relatives in the washing say the same thing as the amāna of chapter 3:

The body was not yours. It is returned — clean, wrapped, quickly, and by people who loved you.