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FASTING FOR RAMADAN: Notes from a Spiritual Practice
Literary Nonfiction. Middle Eastern Studies. Memoir. FASTING FOR RAMADAN is structured as a chronicle of daily meditations, during two cycles of the 30-day rite of daytime abstinence required by Ramadan for purgation and prayer. Estranged in certain ways from his family's cultural traditions when he was younger, Ali has in recent years re-embraced the Ramadan ritual, and brings to this rediscovery an extraordinary delicacy of reflection, a powerfully inquiring mind, and the linguistic precision and ardor of a superb poet. Kazim Ali's searching descriptions of the Ramadan sensibility and its arduous but liberating annual rite of communal fasting is sure to be a revelation to many readers—intellectually illuminating and aesthetically exhilarating. "[A]n important book.... Written 'in that third voice, a voice between two people, neither one nor the other, neither embodied nor disembodied.' I have wanted to know what fasting in Islam involved...to admire its intentions and effects in solitude.... I hope that multitudes will find their way to [this book]"—Fanny Howe.
193 pages, Paperback
First published April 15, 2011
About the author
Kazim Ali
61 books98 followersKazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom and has lived transnationally in the United States, Canada, India, France, and the Middle East. His books encompass multiple genres, includingthe volumes of poetry Inquisition, Sky Ward, winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award; The Fortieth Day; All One’s Blue; and the cross-genre texts Bright Felon and Wind Instrument. His novels include the recently published The Secret Room: A String Quartet and among his books of essays are the hybrid memoir Silver Road: Essays, Maps & Calligraphies and Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice. He is also an accomplished translator (of Marguerite Duras, Sohrab Sepehri, Ananda Devi, Mahmoud Chokrollahi and others) and an editor of several anthologies and books of criticism. After a career in public policy and organizing, Ali taught at various colleges and universities, including Oberlin College, Davidson College, St. Mary's College of California, and Naropa University. He is currently a Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. His newest books are a volume of three long poems entitled The Voice of Sheila Chandra and a memoir of his Canadian childhood, Northern Light.
Author photo by Tanya Rosen-Jones from Kazim Ali's press kit.
Author photo by Tanya Rosen-Jones from Kazim Ali's press kit.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
June 2, 2024
Een review in quotes. Omdat Kazim Ali’s boek zo mooi is dat ik er geen eigen woorden voor heb. Het zijn zinnen uit aantekeningen van zijn spirituele beoefening, vasten tijdens de Ramadan:
“What if a human is not a separate entity after all but a microcosmic amalgamation of universal energy?”
“Maybe part of the point is this: To go on when there is no desire to go on. To practice when practice is burdensome.”
“The moon (…) is a heavenly body with no light of its own: Like a human it must reflect the animating light from without.”
“What if a human is not a separate entity after all but a microcosmic amalgamation of universal energy?”
“Maybe part of the point is this: To go on when there is no desire to go on. To practice when practice is burdensome.”
“The moon (…) is a heavenly body with no light of its own: Like a human it must reflect the animating light from without.”
July 19, 2015
A beautiful book - more subjective, liberal and poetic than I expected. I hope to make it a regular Ramadan companion. Several of its lines are beautiful and profound enough to rival scripture. I hope to get copies for my husband's sisters next year.
July 4, 2015
I read this every year during Ramadan! Love it - so conscious and insightful :)
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March 20, 2017This book is a wonder. Pure wonderful. I'm just not sure another book like this exists that offers so much of what you want and need during the fast, right down to recipes (which are great). Although I was following the Baha'i regimen rather than the Muslim, this is still the book I want to press into people's hands when they ask (in complete confusion and often some weird passing judgement) "Why are you fasting?" I was continually struck by how similarly the daylight fast affects individual bodies and minds, the way it makes your days count somehow, the way it sends your mind down these particular paths. Kazim Ali gets it. He gets it on every page: "fasting, the oddest of puzzles, that which has a hundred and one solutions," "a long day without food, a boat carved hollow so it can float on the surface of the sea." And I'm there with him, too, when he feels conflicted about religious community and supersensitive to the false dichotomies of belonging/not belonging, believing/not believing. I hope I'll reread this, and pass it around, because there are many kinds of sustenance, and this is one of them.
March 7, 2015
Lots of good stuff in here. Some favorites:
pages ix - x This passage from the Preface gives a sense about how the book is going to go: "Why two books belong between the same covers, why two books are really one book? Because on Eid ul-Fitr, the celebration at the end of the fasting month, when traveling to the mosque for special prayers you are supposed to take one route going and another, different route coming home."
pages 25-27 On point for our interfaith book group: " . . . there has always been a lively debate over the real location of the Far Mosque [Al-Aqsa, in Jerusalem], defined in scripture not geographically but solely by that adjective, "far." Rumi put his two cents in when he wrote, "That mosque Sulayman built was not made of bricks and stone. The farthest mosque is the one inside you." . . . interesting that he makes no distinction between the destroyed Temple of Solomon, mourned by countless people, and the mosque that was built in its place. What if every mosque and synagogue were the same place? Worshipped in by different communities with their own litanies and scriptures, at their own appointed times? If only."
page 64 "Fasting isn't about atonement. . . . It is more for the purpose of focusing the mind on spiritual practices rather than the less subtle requirements of the body."
page 65 "Three of the students who came for the iftar asked me if there was a place where they could pray. I did not hesitate to lead them to the room where meditation and yoga take place, my immediate action revealing to me what I had paid lip service to, all along--that yoga was for me a form of prayer."
page 65 "The icons on the altar [Ganesh and Buddha] are not objects of worship, rather they are arrows pointing in a certain direction. And I am a man with many arrows inside me, each pointing in a different direction."
pages ix - x This passage from the Preface gives a sense about how the book is going to go: "Why two books belong between the same covers, why two books are really one book? Because on Eid ul-Fitr, the celebration at the end of the fasting month, when traveling to the mosque for special prayers you are supposed to take one route going and another, different route coming home."
pages 25-27 On point for our interfaith book group: " . . . there has always been a lively debate over the real location of the Far Mosque [Al-Aqsa, in Jerusalem], defined in scripture not geographically but solely by that adjective, "far." Rumi put his two cents in when he wrote, "That mosque Sulayman built was not made of bricks and stone. The farthest mosque is the one inside you." . . . interesting that he makes no distinction between the destroyed Temple of Solomon, mourned by countless people, and the mosque that was built in its place. What if every mosque and synagogue were the same place? Worshipped in by different communities with their own litanies and scriptures, at their own appointed times? If only."
page 64 "Fasting isn't about atonement. . . . It is more for the purpose of focusing the mind on spiritual practices rather than the less subtle requirements of the body."
page 65 "Three of the students who came for the iftar asked me if there was a place where they could pray. I did not hesitate to lead them to the room where meditation and yoga take place, my immediate action revealing to me what I had paid lip service to, all along--that yoga was for me a form of prayer."
page 65 "The icons on the altar [Ganesh and Buddha] are not objects of worship, rather they are arrows pointing in a certain direction. And I am a man with many arrows inside me, each pointing in a different direction."
March 19, 2015
I was originally recommended Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice by a friend, Jen Gordon, who compared author Kazim Ali's experiences fasting for an entire month to her own experiences fasting for a day at a time in Jewish ritual. What made Fasting for Ramadan so resonant for me was Ali's experience of fasting as a way to bring focus to his spiritual life; certainly during some years, Yom Kippur—the only date on the Jewish calendar on which I fast regularly these days—qualifies for me as uplifting in a similar sense.
Ali, a professor of literature and creative writing at Oberlin, has a resonant experience in part because his descriptions of his monthlong fast are ecumenical. Multiple times, he mentions that he wishes all people could experience the closeness to the divine that he feels at the best times during his fast, and he represents a poster man against those Islamophobes who denounce the religion as barbaric and radical; he is neither of those things. Ali's experience in Fasting for Ramadan is philosophical, and it is moving to see how someone connects to holiness in his own particular way.
All in all, a valuable contribution to religious literature.
Ali, a professor of literature and creative writing at Oberlin, has a resonant experience in part because his descriptions of his monthlong fast are ecumenical. Multiple times, he mentions that he wishes all people could experience the closeness to the divine that he feels at the best times during his fast, and he represents a poster man against those Islamophobes who denounce the religion as barbaric and radical; he is neither of those things. Ali's experience in Fasting for Ramadan is philosophical, and it is moving to see how someone connects to holiness in his own particular way.
All in all, a valuable contribution to religious literature.
November 13, 2013
Some years ago on the children's shelves at our local library there were books about Ramadan, and I noticed with interest that several had a plot in which an underage Muslim child was secretly fasting because he wants to take part in what the adults are doing. I can't say I've ever seen a pro-fasting Yom Kippur book! though there is plenty of nice commentary to help adults find meaning in the act of not-eating.
Ali journals, poetically, his daily experiences of the Ramadan fast: what it's teaching him, how the experience of weakness impacts him spiritually, etc. Since I experience the obligatory fasts of Judaism as primarily a tedious slog of suffering and crankiness, and everything I've ever seen about the Ramadan fast has focused on interference (in schoolkids) with ability to attend to classwork as an issue for kids in public schools, and the trivial(izing) point that fasting in Ramadan makes you more sensitive to poor people. This book does not do that: Ali finds positive and active spiritual meaning in the fast, with differences and nuances in each day, as the experience builds and builds. Read it and find out how.
Ali journals, poetically, his daily experiences of the Ramadan fast: what it's teaching him, how the experience of weakness impacts him spiritually, etc. Since I experience the obligatory fasts of Judaism as primarily a tedious slog of suffering and crankiness, and everything I've ever seen about the Ramadan fast has focused on interference (in schoolkids) with ability to attend to classwork as an issue for kids in public schools, and the trivial(izing) point that fasting in Ramadan makes you more sensitive to poor people. This book does not do that: Ali finds positive and active spiritual meaning in the fast, with differences and nuances in each day, as the experience builds and builds. Read it and find out how.
July 12, 2018
I don’t fast for Ramadan but was curious about what it would be like to read about it. This book was great with detailing the effects of fasting and the spiritual reasons behind it. Ali is a gifted storyteller and someone who I will certainly read more of in the future. Some of the quotes I really enjoyed were:
- “So man has gone to the moon,” remarked Anais Nin with considerable disinterest, after the lunar landing. “He has so much further to go within himself.” – p. 22
- “I’ve never managed a regular practice of the daily prayers in all my years of fasting. Some people have discounted my practice of fasting since this is only the second pillar of faith. Why practice the second pillar of faith while ignoring the first, prayer, perhaps thus more essential, they ask.” – p. 156
- “So man has gone to the moon,” remarked Anais Nin with considerable disinterest, after the lunar landing. “He has so much further to go within himself.” – p. 22
- “I’ve never managed a regular practice of the daily prayers in all my years of fasting. Some people have discounted my practice of fasting since this is only the second pillar of faith. Why practice the second pillar of faith while ignoring the first, prayer, perhaps thus more essential, they ask.” – p. 156
November 29, 2011
This book was a small glimpse into one person's spiritual practice, but was hugely spiritual itself. I am not a Muslim (or anything for that matter), but the practice of fasting, and reflections on life and God were expressed beautifully. Ali is a fantastic writer, and his insight into humanity and spirituality is great. He has a strong control of language, using metaphor and description with a great effect. Meditative and flowing, it was a beautiful read.
I felt uplifted and spiritually fed after reading Fasting for Ramadan, and will definitely go back to it in the future.
I felt uplifted and spiritually fed after reading Fasting for Ramadan, and will definitely go back to it in the future.
August 9, 2016
ah! a book to clutch to one's self. i feel like a tipped over vessel when reading this one
October 21, 2017
The first half was beyond interesting but then began to be difficult to read.
May 25, 2020
A powerful and honest look at fasting as spiritual practice and how it impacts the self as well as the community.
May 24, 2022
Beautiful, profound. So much to return to and I plan to do so.
February 20, 2024
i loved it. listened to the audiobook while fasting (as the only form of "entertainment"). want to re-read it and highlight the meaningful passages <3
April 8, 2017
This was a really nice exploration of the author's experiences fasting during two different months of Ramadan. It was poetic and lyrical, but also provided some interesting insights into the purposes and experiences involved in fasting, which gave me some added motivation to consider my own fasting and what I can from it, and what more, perhaps, I should be gaining from it.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews