Monday, July 7, 2014

Different thoughts, different photographs and different fasting times around the world

Different thoughts, different photographs and different fasting times around the world.

Asif Khan
Chicago

Ramadan is a month long spiritual gym where we work on metaphysical muscles through more deliberate disciplines, prayer, reflections and worship. It is an annual Muslim attempt to simultaneously grow vertically in their relationship with their Lord and horizontally with fellow human beings through emphatic and various acts of charity. It is a month of self-auditing and self-evaluation where believers check their accounts in Heavenly currency terms. May we all able to bring ourselves to a level where we can accept and welcome all what Ramadan can give us.

-Abdullah Antepli

Ramadan is a narrow path that reminds us fasting is not just about abstaining from food and drink, but also from backbiting, gossiping, malice, suspicion, miserliness, extravagance, vulgarity, immodesty, infidelity, arrogance, ignorance, cowardice, and thinking ill of others, so that when food and drink become permissible once again, we have built an internal fortress to permanently abstain from the aforementioned bad habits.

-Qasim Rashid

Muslims who participate in Ramadan are not only supporting and reinforcing each other's spiritual state in a coherent field of resonance, they are also contributing to the global coherence of humanity by sending the energies of love, devotion, and ego-transcendence into the collective soul. Fasting in Ramadan, because it offers an intense lived experience of the holy, saves Islam from being merely a form of belief and takes it to the level of spiritual perception, which is the sustenance of faith.

-Shaikh Kabir Helminski

In the Bible it is stated 'Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in us' (I Cor. 6:19), and in the Qur'an God says, 'I breathe into him [Adam] My Spirit' (28:72).

With these verses in mind, the spiritual practices of fasting, prayers, charity, and intense meditation during Ramadan reminds us that our body is a base for the presence of the Spirit. Experiencing the presence of the Spirit reminds us to appreciate the body as sacred as well as rediscover and reconnect the sacredness of nature. The combination of reestablishing our link with nature’s ecology and a deeper God-consciousness (tawhid) fosters a heightened awareness of the One present in all things.

Ramadan’s sacred time re-delivers what it means to be human; it provides insight into knowledge of love, beauty, and truth while living a life of gratitude. Ramadan tells us that cultivating wisdom is beyond dogma and doctrine, rather the focus is on the Spirit.
-Qamar Ul Huda


An officer of Malaysia's Islamic authority uses a telescope to perform "rukyah", the sighting of the new moon of Ramadan, in Putrajaya outside Kuala Lumpur. Muslims scan the sky at dusk in the beginning of the lunar calendar's ninth month in search of the new moon to proclaim the start of Ramadan, Islam's holiest month.


A boy watches helpers distribute food as he waits to break fast with devotees on the first day of Ramadan at a mosque in Singapore.

Children break their fast on the first day of Ramadan in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Children break their fast on the first day of Ramadan in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  Manan Vatsyayana, AFP/Getty Images


Muslims attend an evening mass prayer session called "tarawih" to mark the holy fasting month of Ramadan at Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia, June 28, 2014.

Photo/Binsar Bakkara

Ramadan 2014
A man reads the Koran in a mosque in Sanaa ahead of Ramadan. Photo courtesy Reuters
 
Ramadan 2014
A man reads the Koran in a mosque in Sanaa ahead of Ramadan. Photo courtesy Reuters

Ramadan 2014
Filipino Muslim students read Koran at classroom next to Blue Mosque ahead of Muslims holiest month of Ramadan in Taguig, Metro Manila. Photo Reuters

Children read and memorize the holy Quran, Islam's holy book, at a mosque in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
Children read and memorize the holy Quran, Islam's holy book, at a mosque in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.  Noorullah Shirzada, AFP/Getty Images
A Palestinian man reads the Quran in the Sayed al-Hashim Mosque in Gaza City.
A Palestinian man reads the Quran in the Sayed al-Hashim Mosque in Gaza City.  Mahmud Hams, AFP/Getty Images
Children recite passages from the Quran at an Islamic school in Nairobi, Kenya.
Children recite passages from the Quran at an Islamic school in Nairobi, Kenya.  Sayyid Azim, AP
Ramadan 2014
Vendor looks on as he sells dates at a market ahead of the holy fasting month of Ramadan in Utaiqah neighborhood, south of Riyadh. REUTERS
Ramadan 2014
People attend a Friday prayer outside a worship hall of the Niujie Mosque in Beijing, ahead of the holy fasting month of RamadanREUTERS
http://news.asiaone.com/sites/default/files/original_images/Jun2014/20140629_ramadan_AFP.jpg
Muslim faithfuls pray at Assalam Mosque on June 28, 2014 in Nantes, western France, on the eve the first day of Ramadan

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