Sawm (Fasting)

Sawm is the fast of Ramadan, the fourth Pillar of Islam, commanded in the Quran for the lunar month in which the tradition holds the Quran was first revealed. From the first light of dawn until sunset, adult Muslims abstain from food, drink, smoking and marital relations; the fast is broken each evening (iftar), traditionally with dates and water, and a pre-dawn meal (suhur) precedes the day. The sick, the travelling, the pregnant, the nursing and the menstruating are exempted, making up the days later or, where they cannot, feeding the poor instead.

The fast is not understood primarily as deprivation but as a discipline of taqwa, God-consciousness, and it is paired with intensified prayer, night prayers called tarawih, Quran recitation, and charity. Because the Islamic calendar is lunar, Ramadan migrates through the solar year, so the length of the fasting day varies enormously with latitude and season, a fact that has generated real juristic discussion for Muslims living near the poles. The month closes with the festival of Eid al-Fitr.

Ramadan is fixed to the Islamic lunar calendar, which runs about eleven days shorter than the solar year and carries no leap month to correct the drift, so the fasting month cycles slowly through every season across roughly a thirty three year span. Early Muslim communities in Arabia fasted through a fairly consistent climate; Muslims today may fast through a summer with sixteen or more hours of daylight in northern latitudes one decade and a mild winter fast a decade later, a variation the earliest Muslim community did not face in the same way. Some scholars record an earlier fast connected to the Jewish Day of Atonement, Ashura, kept before Ramadan fasting was made obligatory and afterward continued as a separate, voluntary fast rather than dropped.

Determining when the month begins has its own long running dispute: the classical method requires an actual sighting of the new moon, reported by trustworthy witnesses to local authorities, while modern astronomical calculation can predict the moon's position precisely in advance. Many countries and communities have adopted calculation for convenience and consistency, while others insist sighting is what tradition requires, so the fast commonly begins on different days in different countries in the same year. For Muslims living at extreme latitudes where the sun barely sets or barely rises, scholars have issued rulings permitting the fast to follow the timing of the nearest moderate latitude or of Mecca itself.