Fasting from dawn to dusk in Ramadan

Muslims affirm the duty to fast from dawn (fajr) to sunset through the lunar month of Ramadan, abstaining from food, drink, and marital relations during daylight hours. It is the fourth of the Five Pillars, commanded in the Quran, which prescribes the fast for the month in which the Quran was first sent down and frames it as a discipline meant to cultivate taqwa, God-consciousness, rather than mere abstinence (2:183-185). The sick, travelers, the pregnant and nursing, and others are exempted, making up the missed days later or, where that is not possible, feeding the poor in their place.

Because the Islamic calendar is lunar and unadjusted to the solar year, Ramadan cycles slowly through every season over roughly three decades, so believers in different generations fast through short winter days and long, demanding summer ones in turn, a fact the tradition treats as part of the discipline's fairness across a lifetime rather than an accident to be corrected. Classical jurisprudence developed a fairly technical casuistry around what breaks the fast, disputing, for instance, whether an injection, an inhaler, or unintentional swallowing invalidates it, with the different schools reaching different conservative and lenient rulings on each case.

Sufi writers, al-Ghazali among the best known, distinguished the fast of the body from a fast of the tongue, the eyes, and the heart, holding that abstaining from food while still lying, looking with desire, or harboring malice falls short of the fast's real aim; this interior reading does not replace the physical requirement but is presented as its completion.

The obligation is held by Sunni and Shia alike, with the schools differing chiefly on technical points such as the precise moment at which the fast may be broken each evening, Shia jurisprudence generally requiring a slightly later confirmation of sunset than most Sunni practice. Beyond physical abstention, the tradition stresses restraint of speech and conduct, additional night prayers, tarawih in the Sunni congregational form, and heightened charity, and it fixes the month's climax in the last ten nights, when Laylat al-Qadr, the Night of Power commemorating the Quran's revelation, is sought, and some believers undertake itikaf, a period of retreat in the mosque.

The month ends in the festival of Eid al-Fitr, marked by communal prayer, the giving of a specific charity (zakat al-fitr) intended to let the poor share in the celebration, and shared meals that, in many cultures, have grown into the month's most visible social institution, the nightly iftar gathering that breaks each day's fast.

As one of the Pillars, Ramadan belongs with the other defining acts of Muslim devotion, and its emphasis on self-restraint as a school for piety invites comparison with fasting disciplines elsewhere, such as the Christian observance of Lent; the traditions differ sharply in form and length, but both frame renewed physical discipline as the route to a renewed inward state, a pattern common enough across religious fasting that scholars of comparative religion treat it as one of the recurring shapes ascetic practice takes.