Abdal Hakim Murad – Fasting & Anxiety Ramadan Moments 2
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The human brain is designed for healthy eating, not just memory, and for social interaction. Loneliness is linked to fasting and weight loss, and the brain is designed for social interaction and loneliness. The brain is also designed for social interaction and the Holy Prophet alayhiinking for health and healing. Visiting busy time is essential for healthy eating, and learning about the Holy Prophet alayhiinking for health and healing is important.
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Smilla Rahmanir Rahim Al hamdu lillahi rabbil aalameen or salat
wa salam ala Ecademy NBI even more Celine Sadie no Amala no Habibi,
no Muhammad or other early wasafi Edge Marine.
So we're entering once more into the fasting month
setting sailed into that fathomless ocean.
Whenever things seems to change, and everything in our lives
becomes more serious
angels fly, the demons are changed. It's the time of SABR
with all that that implies a time of restraint.
A Solmonese for Sabra.
It's the Holy Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam fasting is half
of Samadhi. This is a Hadith, in Timothy.
And this school, spiritual School of Ramadan, this kind of detox
that we experience every year by the Grace of Allah subhanaw taala
reminds us of the essential openness of the religion that its
capacity to uplift us, to bring us joy to bring us recentering to
ground us once again.
Famous Hadith that I've always loved narrated by my Muslim, it's
in the hadith of Sahib radula Juan,
the Holy Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Arja ban li M real
movement
in the Umrah who called the whole higher
how amazing is the matter of the believer?
Everything about him is good.
Well, Asa Delica Illa min. And is this is only for the believer
in our saw, but who saw rock shakar for who are highroller
we're in Asaba Totara, sabar, veho highroller if something good comes
to him, he has shook her, and that's good for him.
If something unpleasant comes to him, he has solver that is good
for him.
This is why religion always correlates very closely to what we
nowadays call positive mental health outcomes. Because we're
aware that an infinitesimal distance beneath the surface of
things there is goodness, truth, purity, rightness, justice,
perfection.
And that everything, even though it seems mysterious to us, given
our limited perception is simply an overflowing of the Divine
plenitude, which comes from that perfection that goodness, that
mercy, that rightness that justice and this is the meaning of
telecon.
Within our age, human beings,
unbalanced, this is the age of imbalance. Nothing is following a
setup must nothing. Nothing can be characterized as MISA and
everything is tilted one way or another. And on the
jumping deck of this ship of humanity, through the stormy seas
of modernity, as we progress and we feel a bit seasick disoriented,
we're not settled. We don't have this is to curar or the Sakina
that the human heart always craves.
One sign of this imbalance, I think, is the prevalence of
anxiety and depression in modern societies.
For so many decades, they have led the great carnival of humanity
towards a better future, when we will be happier, healthier, more
relaxed. But the reality is that prescriptions for antidepressants
in the United Kingdom went up to fold in the last 10 years.
About 10 million people are on antidepressants, one way or
another.
You have this anxiety epidemic. You have this strange sense that
even though outwardly we never had it so good. Inwardly we're in
turmoil, and we don't know where we are from, what we are, where
we're going. We are floating in a sea of nothingness.
Now we know that fasting is associated with positive mental
health outcomes, intermittent fasting as they call it in the
Natural health industry
that it releases serotonin, that it releases endorphins, that it
represents the natural way for the brain to be. human metabolism is
not geared up for regular snacks, regular injections of sucrose or
whatever else it might be, we are oriented towards occasional
healthy meals, not towards the modern habit of grazing. And the
brain is designed for that. And as a result,
when we're fasting, we get back to the ancient realm of our hunter
gatherer ancestors, who would go for a whole day or perhaps longer
between meals, something had to be killed, berries had to be found on
bushes or whatever were designed for this. And the brain is
designed for that world, and is healthy when something of that
world remains in our lifestyle.
So we get back to this amazing world of
intermittent fasting, where the brain starts to function the way
it's supposed to.
And also just losing weight.
There is also an obesity epidemic in the modern world.
It never used to be the case in this country. But you see more and
more people who are clearly not just overweight, but clinically
obese, that's also associated with depression, not just because of
people's self image, their body image but because the the natural
secretion of happiness enzymes and hormones is suppressed. That two
is not good for us.
Another thing we find in this fasting month
is that we memorize more. So the month of the Quran,
it's the month particularly when the Imam of our mosque really has
to make sure that is not rusty or the embarrassment of stuttering,
displacing something and allows book being corrected by somebody.
It's quite a stressful business leading the turn away.
But again, the human brain is designed for memorization. our
ancient ancestors didn't have books, they didn't have laptops,
they just had the mind. And it's miraculous capacity to store
enormous amounts of material.
The brain also is designed to be happy, and to secrete those
neurotransmitters that make us cheerful when our memory
capacities are being used.
Those who have memorized enormous quantities in any culture, tend to
have more positive mental health outcomes. It's an area between the
amygdala and the hippocampus, technically speaking, in the
brain, where these neurotransmitters are emitted, and
that's where the memory is thought to be stored. The neuroscientists
are starting to realize this. Were designed for this.
concert pianists. Everybody says, Why do you have to memorize your
text? Why can't the poet Imam just have a book in front of him?
Interesting, the concert pianist also have to become half as as it
were. It might be of the works of Bach or sharper, but they have to
perform from memory. And this is one of their anxieties as well.
They have their tearaway
Andrea Schiff is performing in the personnel room, and is doing the
English suites of bulk and not one note, maybe out of place or people
notice. It's very stressful. And just like the half is they have to
practice and rehearse. And generally a concert pianist has to
memorize about 150 works upward. And he can't really have a career
if he forgets regularly. Or if he needs somebody to turn the pages
for him. That's just not done. So in Western culture as well, mass
memorization is also an esteemed skill. And it's something that
comes through regular practice, we should not be rusty in our
memorization of Quran, even if we only know Jews are less than a
jurist, we should make sure, especially in this fasting month,
that one of the things we benefit from is just going over what we
know, perhaps learning a little bit more, and the brain, which is
hungry for things to memorize, will be grateful to us for this.
Another aspect of the fasting month is of course, that it's
quite a social time.
Britain, the first country in the world with a ministry of
loneliness,
quite a shocking thing.
But she's pretty busy.
We have 3.9 million people who are medically diagnosed with Acute
loneliness, which is a recognized very serious medical condition,
and many millions more who are not really properly socializing. Maybe
they'll talk to somebody when they go to the post office, if there is
still a post office if there is still a bank, but this is a very
lonely society. Individualism produces loneliness as a matter of
course,
Ramadan is a time for sociality, a time for meeting people in the
mosque, or time for meeting people at Iftar time for welcoming
friends and family to our homes. It's a very busy time. And in
traditional Muslim societies, it's a festive time. After the sun goes
around, everybody's in the streets and people are selling things, and
it's kind of a carnival.
But not everybody in our communities is properly embedded
in a community. Sometimes there are people who are recent
arrivals, who are refugees, who are new converts, who don't have
those family and neighborly networks, and we need to look out
for them,
particularly converts. I know people who have to hide the fact
that they're fasting from their parents because their parents
simply don't accept their conversion. people I know who have
their Eid alone, particularly if they're living in fairly remote
parts of the country, for whom Ramadan is not a festive time, but
a time of solitude, a time of loneliness.
One thing we can do during this month, is to look out for those
people. The believer scans the gym out overseas, who seems to be
confused, who doesn't seem to have been there before. Who's not
talking to anybody who's struggling with a prayer perhaps
and see if we can make the acquaintance and perhaps invite
them for Iftar perhaps make sure that they're not alone at a time
and remembering that hadith says, a drummer to Rama the congregation
is mercy. We are social animals. And Islam is a religion of
collectivity. It's a religion of the Juma so in sha Allah, these
are things that we can remember and be made healthy by in this
Ramadan in this wonderful health giving time. We can be physically
healthier, we can be mentally healthier, we can be socially
healthier. And as such in sha Allah, we become congested in
Wahid, the Holy Prophet alayhi salatu salam describes this OMA as
like a single body. So let us be like that, in our hugely diverse,
segmented community and modern Britain. Let's be united by the
fast and let's draw people in. Let's collectively celebrate the
gift of brotherhood. We'll call no my bad Allahu Ana. The Holy
Prophet says, The Allah's slaves as brothers, and inshallah we will
see how happy we are, how we delivered from anxiety and
depression and insha Allah shown the way of sadder, Sabina Sada,
the way of Felicity in this world as well as in the next insha Allah
and let this be one of the lessons and one of the gifts and one of
the blessings of Ramadan for all of us in this time in sha Allah
BarakAllahu Feeco with a couple of CMYK who are salam o aleikum wa
rahmatullah wa barakato.