ATH: "Fasting In The Month Of Ramadan" Imam W. D. Mohammed(ra) 1981

Fasting is as popular today as it has been in the history of humanity. Today people are fasting for health reasons and for spiritual growth and experience. But it seems that people are more weight conscious today than they have ever been, and many are fasting to lose weight. In Islam, fasting has its own special meaning—a meaning that is natural b the religion. It is a meaning that is understood by religious people all over the world who truly practice divine worship.

Fasting in Islam is no new institution or new practice. With the following quotation from the Holy Qur'an, we can see that Prophet Muhammad, to whom the Qur'an was revealed, did not at any time claim to be offering any new fundamental teachings in religion to the religious world:

2: 183.  O ye who believe! Fasting is prescribed to you as it was prescribed to those before you that ye may (learn) - Self-restraint,—

HOLY QUR'AN Translation by Yusuf Ali: Surah II, Verse 183