‘Fasting gives me a direct connection with Allah’
Darren Streete
Recently I was invited to speak at an event on my experience on fasting since it was the first time I was observing the Ramadan fast as a Muslim.
It was an enlightening event where I heard other guest speakers talking about all aspects of fasting. While one scholar spoke on the topic of the essence of fasting, another spoke regarding the medical research on the health benefits of fasting, and yet another scholar spoke about fasting being mentioned in various scriptures. The topic allocated to me was to convey my experiences in how I combat the urges during a day of a fast.
A few days prior I took the time to prepare the approach I was going to take in my topic. First, I thought about the urges that we do face in our fast. Not only we have the urges to eat, drink and our behavioural tendencies. Such as the smell of fresh bread, the thirst for water, and how we react when someone cuts your car on the road. In the end, these urges are only reactions to what we want or want to do. My thoughts on this are that we can control our reactions if we have a focus on what we believe in. For me, the belief in Allah is that focus that enables us to gain the strength we require to get through each moment of every day.
When my time came to the event, everything was okay up until the moment I got up onto the stage and approached the podium. At this point with the lights glaring at me, and tiredness kicking from being in the last hour of the fast, it seemed all went into a blur. All that preparation just seemed to have faded away. I would catch moments of me pouring my feelings out regarding fasting, detailing that the way I deal with this stems back to the reasons of why I reverted in the first place. That fasting gives me a sense of belonging, having a direct connection with Allah. Other moments, I would catch myself talking about chocolate cake, and resist the urge by focusing on my belief in Allah.
For those that saw me on the stage, I do wonder the impression I gave, from me lowing my gaze to avoid the glare of the lights, to my ramblings in the attempt of my speech. The one thing I do note from the experience is that it was myself up there on that podium, expressing my pure thoughts around the topic that I have found increasingly important to me, as I progress through Ramadan. I was honoured to that I was asked to come up on stage and talk, and through Allah, I had the strength to go up there and give what I could, even in my own haphazard manner. In the end, I feel it turned out well, and it was well worth the experience.
saman@khaleejtimes.com
(AS TOLD TO SAMAN HAZIQ) Darren Streete is a 39-year-old British national who came to the UAE two and a half years back. He works as an HR manager with a company in Dubai and embraced Islam in December 2017 at the Islamic Information Center, Satwa.