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stay away permanently from food and drink and cohabitation is the quality of angels. When a person fasts he rises above the animal existence and forges an affinity with angels.

Special Benefit

Moreover, Roza, promotes piety and righteousness in man. It produces in him the ability to control his physical desires. It teaches him how to subordinate his carnal appetites and longings of the heart to the will of Allah (Subhaanahu Wata’aalaa). It is, thus, most effective in the discipline and evolution of the soul.

But these benefits can be derived only when a person conscientiously strives from them and pays due respect, while he is fasting, to the instructions laid down by the Prophet (Peace be upon him) in this connection. It is most necessary to leave strictly alone not only food and drink but also all the major and minor sins. He must neither quarrel nor utter a lie nor engage himself in slander and back-biting. In brief, he should scrupulously avoid all sinful deeds, apparent as well as hidden, as is demanded of him in the Traditions. Some of the relevant Traditions are:

“When any of you keeps a fast he should not speak an indecent or filthy word on engage in a noisy scene, and were anyone to quarrel with him and call him names he should simply say, ‘I am keeping fast (therefore, I cannot pay you back in the same coin)’.”

“Allah (Subhaanahu Wata’aalaa) has no need for him to go without food and drink who cannot shun evil and falsehood even during a fast.”

“Many are there among you who fast and yet gain nothing from it except hunger and thirst.”

In sum, fasts can lead to the promotion of the virtues of piety and righteousness and impart the moral strength needed to control and discipline the sensual appetites when, together with abstention from food and drink, all the major and minor transgressions of the law of Allah (Subhaanahu Wata’aalaa) are also zealously avoided while fasting, more specially the use of foul and filthy language, falsehood, slander and backbiting. If fasts are observed in the right spirit and with proper care and solicitude, the benefits indicated above can undoubtedly, be obtained from them.

Hajj

The last of the fundamental duties in Islam is the Hajj. Laying it down as an essential religious obligation of Muslims, the Quran says:

Pilgrimage thereto is a duty men owe to Allah, those who can afford the journey, but if any deny faith Allah stands not in need of any of His creatures.

In this verse while the Hajj has been declared obligatory it has been made clear that it is applicable only to those who possess the means and material resources to undertake it. But care has been taken, in the last part of it, to warn that if Muslims whom Allah (Subhaanahu Wata’aalaa) has blessed with the necessary material means to perform the pilgrimage still fail to carry out the duty through sheer ingratitude (as is common among the wealthy classes these days) then Allah (Subhaanahu Wata’aalaa) does not stand in need of their pilgrimage. The Almighty, definitely, is not going to lose anything by their not performing the