Jengordon's Reviews > FASTING FOR RAMADAN: Notes from a Spiritual Practice

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.