The origins of Islam: Ramadan

BY BARNABY DEVITT

Long before Mohammed and Islam, Ramadan was the name of the ninth month in the Arabic calendar. The name meant intense heat, scorched earth and little food. It is tempting to believe that, like the Christians with Lent, the ancient Middle Eastern tribes made a virtue out of necessity. Just as the Christian faith proscribes fasting for 40 days at the end of winter—when rations were low and there was no possibility of growing new crops—it seems reasonable to assume that in the Middle East fasting was proscribed during the intense heat of summer when crops could not grow. Further, it made sense to eat only before dawn and after sunset, and it is possible that the conventions of Islamic Ramadan came out of this practice.

The Qu'ran says, "Fasting is obligatory to you as it was upon those before you." (2:183)

According to early Islamic scholars, this refers to the Jewish practice of fasting on Yom Kippur, but why wouldn't it more naturally refer to the already established Middle Eastern tradition of fasting during the month of Ramadan?

We know Mohammed was greatly influenced by the Sabians. He called them "people of the book" like Jews and Christians. Many Sabian practices, such as praying five times a day, standing, kneeling and stretching during prayer, and ceremonial washing before prayer, were practices adopted by Islam. The Sabians also observed Ramadan.

But there is evidence of the practice of Ramadan even earlier in central Africa. The Sabian Empire at one point extended south through Africa to what is now Zimbabwe. There the Lemba people seemed to share many physical, cultural and religious beliefs that would centuries later come to define Islam. They did not eat pork or scaleless fish. They butchered in the manner of Halal or Kosher, and they had a distinctive ceremony to honor the new moon.

Some scholars believe the Lemba may be one of the lost tribes of Israel disbursed 2,700 years ago. They have traced chromosomes from the Israeli Cohen priestly clan to the Lemba, and the Lemba even today practice circumcision and consider themselves the "Chosen People." So, there may even be chromosomal evidence that Muslims are, like the Jews, descendants of Abraham.

The Islamic calendar is a strictly lunar calendar, tied to the phases of the moon, so the month of Ramadan moves backward each year by ten or eleven days. This year Ramadan will begin on the night of Aug. 10 in Mecca, but, because the sighting of the new moon will be seen a day later in the Western Hemisphere, it will begin the evening of Aug. 11 in Minnesota.

The crescent moon, the symbol of the new moon of Ramadan, is on the flag of Turkey (as it is on ten other Muslim nations, for much the same reason that a cross is on the flags of all the nations of Scandinavia). But the crescent moon was on the flag of Byzantium more than a thousand years before Islam. When Byzantium was Roman and pagan, the crescent moon represented the goddess Diana. When Byzantium became Christian and changed to Constantinople, the moon represented the Virgin Mary, and when Constantinople became Istanbul, the moon came to represent Islam. The symbol remained. Only its meaning changed.

The month of Ramadan will end this year on Sept. 9 with the feast of Eid el-Fitr, one of the most festive Islamic holidays, when alms are given to the poor and there is much celebration. It is believed by many that the story of Santa Claus originates in Istanbul when at the Eid el-Fitr a Muslim in a turban gave candy to the Christian children at a time when the end of Ramadan coincided with
Christmas.