It is the holy month of Ramadan when “the gates of heaven are opened and the devils are locked up”.
For Muslims it is a time for prayer and piety, and one of the Five Pillars of Islam when we fast during daylight hours.
The Koran states: “But to fast is best for you, if you only knew.”
Nearly 1,400 years later we are only just learning of the benefits of intermittent fasting – people managing to reverse health conditions and look younger and feel fitter as a result of this.
This year we are free from the restrictions of Covid, the mosques are full of worshippers, and we can visit friends and family. But this year there is another menacing shadow – the cost-of-living crisis.
Ramadan is not just about fasting but also about feasting. We open the fast with a simple date and water, as the prophet Muhammad would do, then tuck into lavish, lovingly cooked meals.
This year, many Muslims are feeling hungry, not because they are fasting, but because they can’t afford to eat.
The charity Islamic Relief adds that 50% of Muslim households are living in poverty and struggling to put food on the table.
We’ve always thought of poverty – actual sick-to-the- stomach hunger – as being something that happened in far-flung countries, but it is happening right here at unprecedented levels.
With rocketing fuel prices, the supermarket shelves empty because of Brexit lies, and the staggering rise in energy costs, many of us aren’t just “feeling the pinch”, we are being squeezed to death.
Forget Harold Macmillan’s “you’ve never had it so good” comment from the 1950s, have we ever had it so bad?
France has capped its energy prices but here we still moronically pay the bills of our MPs. We should be taking to the streets but we are too hungry and too ill because Covid hasn’t gone anywhere.
What is it going to take for us to hold this government’s corrupt decisions to account?
It may be Ramadan but clearly not ALL the devils have been locked up.
