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Ramadan, the month of fasting, is the month in which the Qur’an was revealed. Before reading the Qur’an, we seek refuge with Allah from satan the rejected enemy. Among the meanings of this practice is that we are intending to empty our hearts of everything other than the desire to know G-d’s purpose, which He communicates to us directly within the Qur’an. The rejected enemy communicates to us via everything that he reaches in the world around us.
The istiaathah, then, carries the principle of emptying. In reality, in all that we do, we are either emptying ourselves or filling ourselves. We may either be emptying ourselves of what is not good and filling ourselves with what is good, or emptying ourselves of good things and filling ourselves up with what is not good. This can also be likened to the expansion and contraction of breathing. This dynamic is the perpetual state of his heart, mind, and spirit.
Ramadan, in its daily cycle of abstaining from food, drink, and lawful engagement with our mates, alongside the avoidance of vain talk, anger, and so on, is a discipline of emptying ourselves of the tendency to respond to impulse, and any behaviors that are unbecoming of Allah’s servants. At the same time, we fill ourselves in the night with little food, natural, then man-made, and much Qur’an and remembrance.
The day is when we engage the earth; we come into consciousness out of sleep, we engage the world to fulfill our needs, we encounter others, and so on. It is in this interaction that the human ego is crafted, conditioned, and influenced. The student, the businessman, the politician, etc are all formed in and by their fields during the day when they engage in their work. Thus, their consciousness and their sense of self become identified with their daily routines.
Fasting, as a daytime discipline, suggests that we are to empty out the ego, rid ourselves of the consciousness that the world has imparted to us, though from our work, habits, achievements, and become identified, in our core, as persons serving G-d’s Will above all things. Isn't the obedient servant the essential identity we are to have?
Emptying, however, is just one step of the process. The other is to give direction to the vessel that has been emptied, to restructure the ego, redirect the consciousness of man so that it performs in the manner of the true servant. This is the spirit of the Qur’an–making man in the mold G-d has willed he be in. Thus, in the night, the heart and attention are to go to sleep to man’s world, to our own habits and tendencies that formed in his world, and yet be redirected and adorned by the celestial lights of G-d’s Revelation. Then and only then can we find the straight path, ascend it, and come back into the world with a new light, a renewed awareness of what our work in the earth is to be.
The mother of Mary, upon them both be peace, prayed for the life in her womb before she was aware of it being either a male or a female. This is a sign of faith and resignation of one’s will to the Will of G-d. Among the things she asked of her Lord was that He protect her offspring and her descendants from the rejected satan. G-d says, in plain and open terms, that He accepted her request with an excellent acceptance.
Thus, Mary grew under the direct protection of Allah, and nothing of satan came into her, and nothing from him came out of her. She, too, was completely empty of anything other than the will to do G-d’s Will. This is why the Christ, the Word and Spirit, was born from her. The one protected from satan the rejected enemy, received the spirit, the angel, and from her came forth the Word and Spirit.
We seek refuge with Allah from satan the rejected enemy, before reading the Qur’an because we want to be empty of his influences put upon the world, we want to be filled with the Spirit and Word of G-d, and we want for the same to express itself through us in this world, and move from our presence throughout the earth.
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