Mental Tricks in Islam : Ramadan Fasting

[exMohammed]

We all know about the Islamic ramadan fasting thing, which is basically not allowing any food/drinks/medicine to enter your body and not having sex from sunrise to sunset 12-16 hours.

However, only a few ask : Why did Muhammad make his followers do that?

Fasting is a mental trick used in MANY RELIGIONS. Not only Islam ( There is a reason that many religions have fasting, it can't just be like that) It must be doing something right so that it got into so many religions, right?


The main purpose of fasting is : Torturing the followers of your religion by denying them food and sex for a certain period of time. What would the inventor of a religion benefit from torturing his own follower?

To know this we need to remember that Islam ( Just like most religions that survived to this day) is mainly designed to attract POOR PEOPLE. ( This can be noticed when you look at poor & rich Muslims, poor muslims are always more religious than rich muslims, as the religion is designed primarily for poor people)

Poor people back then had two main struggles :

- Treated like shit, disrespected, feeling worthless
- No money, therefore unable to buy luxuries, unable to get married and have kids, unable to enjoy life.

Islam fixes a poor man's struggles :
- Allah loves you, you are allah's favorite creation, you are worth alot to Allah that he will resurrect you just to give you the best life ever in heaven.
- Promises of extremely luxurious lives in heaven with extremely expensive foods and extremely hot sex slaves.


As you can see, Islam's "fixes" are just promises. They do work in keeping most of the followers in check, but some of them want immediate physical happiness, religion creators can only give false promises, they know that praying to become rich doesn't really work, and some people really need immediate physical happiness, this is when RAMADAN comes in as the knight in shining armor.

Ramadan works by this simple principle. Imagine a poor man who has a really annoying wife. She keeps complaining about her life as a poor woman and how she can't really get any jewelries, expensive clothes, food, etc.. This man decides to manipulate his wife in order to make her happy. He takes their one and only son when he's out playing by himself, takes him to a close friend's house, and tells his friend to take care of his son. He then goes back to his wife, and they notice the son isn't there. The wife starts going crazy and forgets all about the jewelries and the clothes that she wants and her focus becomes on finding her son. A few days later, the man brings his son, scatters some dirt on his clothes, and goes to his wife. He tells her he searched everywhere and found him in a little hole a few blocks away. The wife is extremely happy! Even though he didn't really give her anything to make her physically happy, he was able to make her happy. This happiness is temporary, so this guy keeps doing tricks similar to this to make his wife happy.

Another example : Let's say a really grumpy and unhappy man goes on an airplane. The airplane crashes. The guy is extremely scared, but by the power of miracles, he survives at the end( And no, troll physics, he didnt jump at the last second when the airplane hit the ground) . On that day, he will be extremely happy, even though nothing really happened, and if the plane didn't crash in the first place, he would still be a grumpy man.


Now we can see the reason why religion creators add fasting to their religion. It can give physical happiness FOR FREE. And the people aren't really SAD when they are fasting in Ramadan, because they know it's the right thing that god told them to do and because they know they are getting so many "good boy" points with god due to fasting.


Muhammad himself exposed this manipulation in his sayings :

The Messenger of Allah said: "There are two joys for the fasting person: the joy when he breaks his fast, and the joy of when he meets his Lord."

Source : http://sunnah.com/search/%D9%81%D8%B1%D8...8%A7%D9%86



And in another saying :

"Whoever among you can afford it, let him get married, for it is more effective in lowering the gaze and guarding chastity. And whoever cannot afford it, then let him fast, for it will be a restraint for him."

So he's basically saying : Whoever doesn't have enough money to get married, Its OK, you can fast ! ( Remember the story of the wife who can't get good clothes so her son goes away and she doesn't care about the clothes anymore, the story is the same here but with sex instead of clothes and with food instead of the little boy)

Source : http://sunnah.com/search/%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8...8%B5%D9%85




Remember that fasting in Islam is not only in Ramadan, it is A MUST only in Ramadan, but there are many days that you could fast to get "good boy" points with allah and improve your luxuries in heaven. Such as :

Fasting every other day. ( Muhammad said the best fasting is the fasting of (forgot prophet's name), and that guy used to fast every other day, ofcourse there are no Muslims hardcore enough to do this nowadays)

Fasting Mondays and Thursdays ( Increased XP when you fast these days)

Fasting "white days" ( fasting 13th day and 15th day of the Islamic calendar months)


copied from an arabic forum and translated to english.

[CapnAwesome]

Some excellent points about fasting. What I've always wondered about the fasting in Ramadan is how he expects Swedish Muslims to do it when Ramadan falls in the summer. How can an omnipresent God not know that there are places with such long days?

[ShaMan]

Fasting, for me, is a discipline that hones my appreciation for sensuality in its many forms. I abstain from certain foods and activities whenever I sense pride or exaggerated ego driving my motivations. I fast until contrition is once again my impetus - then I break my fast with a humble celebration, usually consisting of simple foods and tepid water. I then bathe in the river.