Abdal Hakim Murad – Fasting & Anxiety Ramadan Moments 2

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.