BY MULUGETA GUDETA
Ethiopia is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multicultural country where Christians, Muslims and members of other religious denominations lived together for many centuries. These multiplicities of religions and cultures as well as faiths are heritages from bygone days still shaping the lives of tens of millions of people.
Every religion has its rituals and rules of daily life while fasting is one of the most important practices of people in most religions. Although fasting sounds simple and casual, it has deep significance or implications when it comes to religious fasting.
For analytical purpose, we can divide fasting into two categories. The first category includes fasting as a non-religious exercise aimed at improving personal health or as an exercise in moderation and humility. Many people around the world follow a fasting regimen at different times in their life, regularly or intermittently in order to cleanse their bodies or spirits without resorting to any faith or belief system.
In modern medical practices, fasting is considered or applied as one of the methods to improve human health that might have been affected by overeating or any other abusive practice that often lead to what is known as non-communicable diseases like diabetes or high blood pressure.
Intermittent fasting, or fasting whenever the need arises, is nowadays taken as a modern lifestyle among the young and fashionable members of society who worry about their health and their appearances. However, the most widely and consistently practiced fasting is the one related to faith or religion. Almost all faiths include fasting in their rituals in order to help their practitioners to have moments of closeness with the divinities so that their prayers would be better heard and their wishes fulfilled.
The second kind of fasting is religious fasting which is “a regimen undertaken for spiritual or religious purpose and is defined as a nutritional model characterized by various degrees of caloric restriction and abstinence from specific foods. Such fasting has become increasingly popular around the world.
” However, fasting in spiritual life does not follow a uniform manifestation or objective. In Christian faith for instance, “fasting is a spiritual discipline that is taught in the Bible. Jesus expected His followers to fast and He said that God rewards fasting. According to the Bible fasting means, to voluntarily reduce or eliminate your intake of food for a specific time and purpose.”
Islam is one of the leading religions in the world with its own teaching on fasting. Fasting in Islam “generally entails abstaining from food and drink as well as sexual relations from before the first light of dawn until the setting of the sun. Muslims are required on each of the 29 to 30 days of Ramadan. If unable to fast, charity or fasting days outside Ramadan suffice.
” Fasting in Islam is one of the main pillars of the faith although it is not limited to Islam. According to Wikipedia, “Fasting is not for only Muslims, it has been practiced for centuries by religions such as Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Judaism and Taoism, among others. Some societies sin North America fasted to serve as penance for sin and avert catastrophes.”
There are also two types of fasting in Islam without going into the details. The one is obligatory while the other is voluntary. “Obligatory fasting can be further subdivided into the fast of Ramadan, the fast of expiration and the fast of fulfilling a vow. The fast of Ramadan, according to the Qur’an Sunnah and consensus are obligatory.”
According to sources, there are two essential verses in the Qur’an that order believers to fast. One of them says, “O you who believe, fasting is prescribed for you as it was prescribed for the people before you in order for you to gain God consciousness…” According to the same source, the second verse says in part that fasting is “guidance for mankind and clear proofs of the guidance and the criterion and whoever of you is resident let him fast the month…”
Islam and Islamic practices in Ethiopia have a long and tortuous history characterized mainly by peaceful coexistence of these two religions. Available historical studies indicate that Islam has passed through many trials and tribulations to reach the present stage of relative harmony and the peaceful coexistence of all religious denominations. According to Ahmedin Jebel, an Ethiopian scholar on Islamic affairs, Ethiopia is almost the first country to welcome Islam and Muslims at a time of great persecution and sufferings in Mecca, the birthplace of the religion.
According to some writers and historians, the expansion of the Imperial state in the 19th century brought has brought with it the expansion of Ethiopian sovereignty. Bender, an authority on Ethiopia’s ethnic and linguistic diversity says for instance that, “The diversity of the new state’s populations encompassed culture, economy, and language, with ‘about a dozen Semitic languages, 22 Cushitic, 18 Omotic, and 18 Nilo-Saharan’. It extended to religion, with each of the four major categories of animism/Paganism, Judaism, and Islam”
John Markakis on his part considers the expansion of the Ethiopia nation- state as being one of the causes of ensuing conflicts along ethnic and religious lines. He says, that “While Abyssinia had been a relatively homogenous state with deep Christian roots, the newly acquired territories were inhabited by a large number of ethnic groups among whom Islam predominated.”
Ethiopia’s religious diversity is in fact one of its strengths as a nation and this is at present going through a phase of positive and constructive relations between all faiths because one of their unifying factors is the quest for peaceful coexistence among the various ethnic groups and religions of the country. Ethiopian Muslims are presently practicing their faiths in full freedom and respect the values and practices of other religions.
Fasting which is one of the main pillars of the faith, has therefore served as a unifying factor based on divine laws that regulate relations among people in this vast and diverse universe. Despite the generally positive and basically peaceful nature of Islam in Ethiopia, there are also other factions or sect around the world within the faith that are highly politicized and often lead to conflict in Middle Eastern countries in particular.
According to available information, “Muslims in Ethiopia are predominantly Sunni. In Sunni Islam, there are four schools of thought and three of them are located in Ethiopia. Roughly 98% of Ethiopian Muslims are Sunni whilst another 2% adhere to other sects.”
Islam in Ethiopia dates back to the founding of the religion; in 615 when a group of Muslims were counseled by the Prophet Muhammad to escape persecution in Mecca and travel to Ethiopia via modern-day Eritrea. Since its arrival in the country, Islam has remained peaceful and tolerant while in other places around the world Muslims were and are still persecuted for practicing their faith in ways that is suitable to them.
Religious freedom is still a burning issue in many countries in the West in particular where certain rituals are prohibited by the Western establishments. In other countries, extremist Islamic groups are sowing terror among the populations for political and other reasons. It is quite obvious that fanatical or extremist Muslims do not represent mainstream Islam that has always been peaceful, open and humane. Islamic extremism is alien to Ethiopian culture and values while mutual respect among the various religious denominations is increasingly becoming the dominant and consistent feature of the faith.
While speaking about fasting in Ethiopia, one is entitled to consider the two main fasting seasons in Orthodox Christianity and Islam that fall in the same month of March-April. Tens of millions of Ethiopians are actually in a period of fasting according to their respective practices. Orthodox fasting is no limited to one season but is spread throughout the year consisting of shorter and longer periods when consuming meat, eggs, or dairy products is not allowed.
Islam does not impose such dietary restrictions on its followers. Whatever the case may be fasting is generally considered healthy both physically and spiritually as a secular or religious practice around the world. In Ethiopia, EOC faithful are going to break their long fast at the end of this week and that will be the climax of prayers for peace and repentance from sin. The last two months have also been a time for prayer both by Muslims and Christians for peace, national unity and repentance from past sins and a determination not to repeat them in the future.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD FRIDAY 21 APRIL 2023
