Fasting in the religions

The teaching

As each faith's own law of fasting, from its scripture and its teachers teaches it.

The fast in every faith

Every great faith fasts, and each keeps its fast inside a law: a season, a length, a list of what is given up, and a list of those who are excused. Each joins the fast to prayer and to giving, so that what is not eaten turns into attention to God and food for the poor. And each puts the person before the rule: the sick, the young, the old and those whom fasting would harm are excused, and where life is at risk they are bound to eat. What follows is the law of each fast as its own keepers teach it. Outside a faith's own law the house's rule stands, and water is never given up.

Ramadan

In the ninth month of the Islamic year every adult Muslim who is able fasts from the first light of dawn until sunset: from the time, as the Qur'an puts it, when the white thread of dawn can be told from the black thread of night. Between those times nothing is eaten or drunk, there is no smoking and no marital intimacy. The fast begins with an intention made in the heart; a meal is taken before dawn, the suhur, and the fast is broken at sunset, the iftar, by custom with dates and water as the Prophet broke it. The Qur'an gives the purpose: fasting is prescribed for you as it was for those before you, so that you may be mindful of God.

The fast is of the tongue and the hands as well as of the stomach. A saying of the Prophet warns that God has no need of the hunger and thirst of one who does not give up lying and acting on lies. The nights are given to extra prayer, the last ten above all, among which falls the Night of Power, better than a thousand months. Before the prayer of the feast that ends the month, each household gives a set alms of food for the poor, and the month closes with the festival of Eid al-Fitr.

Who is excused in Islam

The verses that command the fast also say who is excused, and why: God wants ease for you, not hardship. The sick and travellers may leave the fast and make up the same number of days later. Those who can fast only with great hardship, the very old and the chronically ill, feed a poor person for each day instead. Women do not fast while menstruating or in the bleeding after childbirth, and make up the days afterwards. Women who are pregnant or nursing and fear for themselves or the child are excused, and make up the days or give food in their place as their school teaches. Children are not bound until they come of age, though many try a few hours or a day.

Islam also keeps voluntary fasts, such as Mondays and Thursdays, the Day of Arafah and the tenth day of Muharram, and it forbids fasting on the two days of feast.

Yom Kippur and the fasts of Israel

The Torah commands Israel to afflict their souls on the tenth day of the seventh month, the Day of Atonement, and the rabbis teach five afflictions: no eating or drinking, no washing for pleasure, no anointing with oil, no leather shoes and no marital relations. The fast runs about twenty-five hours, from before sunset to after nightfall the next day, much of it in the synagogue, from Kol Nidre in the evening to Neilah, the closing of the gates, at the end. On the morning of the fast the prophet is read: 'Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free.' The fast is the outward sign; the turning of the heart, teshuvah, is its substance.

The Ninth of Av, the day of mourning for the destroyed Temples, is a fast of the same length. Four lesser fasts run only from dawn to nightfall: the Fast of Gedaliah, the Tenth of Tevet, the Seventeenth of Tammuz and the Fast of Esther. Jewish law sets the saving of life above every fast: one whose health is in danger must eat and drink, on Yom Kippur too, and a rabbi and a doctor decide together how. Children are not bound until their coming of age, girls at twelve and boys at thirteen.

Lent

Christians fast before Easter for forty days, as Jesus fasted forty days in the wilderness. Lent joins three practices that Jesus names together in the Sermon on the Mount, almsgiving, prayer and fasting, and his instruction for the fast is to hide it: 'But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; that thou appear not unto men to fast.' The Western church counts the forty days from Ash Wednesday, leaving out the Sundays, which are always feasts.

In the Catholic Church the law of fasting binds adults from eighteen until they turn fifty-nine on two days, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday: one full meal, with two smaller meals that together do not equal it. Abstinence from meat binds from the age of fourteen on the Fridays of Lent. The sick, the pregnant and those for whom it would harm health are excused. Many give something up for the whole season, freely, and turn what it saves into alms.

The Orthodox churches keep a stricter Great Lent, beginning on Clean Monday: no meat, dairy, eggs or fish, and on weekdays no wine or oil, with fish allowed on the feasts of the Annunciation and Palm Sunday. They fast on most Wednesdays and Fridays of the year as well. The rule is measured to each person by their spiritual father, who eases it for the sick, the old, the pregnant and those who labour; the Orthodox call that easing economy, and count it part of the rule, not a breach of it.

The fasts of India

Hindu fasting is a vow, vrata, taken for a god or a purpose and kept by the calendar of the moon. Many fast on ekadashi, the eleventh day of each half of the lunar month, sacred to Vishnu, by setting grains and beans aside; others keep a weekly fast for a chosen god, or fasts at festivals such as Navaratri and Maha Shivaratri, the great night of Shiva, which is kept awake in worship. A fast may be complete, or of grain only, or of everything but fruit and milk. Some vows are kept even without water, which the house does not counsel, and the old law books excuse the sick and the weak.

Jains fast more than any other community, as a way of burning away the karma that binds the soul. The full fast, upvas, takes nothing from one sunrise to the next but boiled water, drunk by day; ayambil allows one plain, unseasoned meal of boiled grain, without oil, butter, milk or sugar. Fasts gather above all in Paryushana, the eight or ten days of the rainy season given to forgiveness, which end with the asking and giving of pardon to all living beings. Each fast is taken under a vow, with a monk's or a nun's guidance, and within one's strength.

The Buddhist rule and the Baha'i fast

The Buddha rejected fasting as self-torment, and by the old monastic rule his monks and nuns eat only between dawn and midday, never after. On the observance days of the moon lay Buddhists may take the eight precepts and keep the same rule for a day and a night. The aim is not merit won by suffering but a lighter and clearer mind.

The Baha'i Faith keeps a fast of nineteen days, from the second to the twentieth of March, from sunrise to sunset, as a time of prayer and reflection before the new year. It excuses those under fifteen and over seventy, the sick, travellers, women who are pregnant, nursing or menstruating, and those doing heavy work.

Keeping a faith's fast

A reader who belongs to a faith keeps its fast by its own rules and with its own exemptions, and asks a doctor first where health is in question, above all with diabetes, a heart condition, medicines taken at set times, pregnancy or any history of an eating disorder. Every faith teaches that the fast is for the heart and not for display: it is broken at once if it endangers health, it is never a contest, and it goes with prayer and with giving.

A reader outside the faiths who wishes to learn from them can keep the gentlest part of what they share: a meal eaten slowly, in quiet and with thanks, and the price of a meal given to someone who needs it.