Androids Arise in Cosmos
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Benson C Saili
THIS EARTH, MY BROTHER…
Superuniverse No. 7, the one in which we dwell, is a free will universe. What that means is that neither God, the First Source, nor the Paal Taal, our creators, are supposed to directly intervene in whatever fate befalls us because in a free will universe, you reap what you sow.
As spirit-souls, the Reptilians and Grays had of their own free will sold their souls to Lucifer and consequently Lucifer had inveigled them into incarnating into the physical realm, then trapped them there. Lucifer had got them to devolve instead of evolve because of their own gullibility. Now, if the Reptilians and Grays had fallen victim to deception through the exercise of their own free will, why did the Paal Taal decide to intervene on their behalf?
Well, the reason was that the Reptilians and Grays were the first beings to experience deception. Deception had no precedence to date: no being had ever been deceived before, whether these be angels or humanoids. The Paal Taal therefore felt obliged to call Lucifer to account especially that they had warned him of the perversion that could stem from his secession from the Central Universe. But for those who he would deceive in future, the Paal Taal would not intervene on their behalf as there was already a living and illustrated lesson of the folly of succumbing to deception.
Appearing before a panel of the Paal Taal in the Central Universe, Lucifer was told point blank that he should cease and desist from creating soul-carriers meant to enslave fellow angels. The Reptilian/Gray experiment had to come to a halt forthwith. Lucifer was defiant. Says Jamisson Neruda, a whistleblower who defected from the Labyrinth Group, an ultra-secret Illuminati R&D institution that has been working with Aliens from the Sirius star system since the 1950s: “Lucifer had become attached to the species that he had helped to create. These angelic beings (at the level of the spirit-soul although they had lost their original identity as such) had developed over a number of generations a very sophisticated set of technologies, culture, and social order. It was like an extended family in many ways to Lucifer. So, he negotiated to modify his creation so they would no longer accommodate the angelic frequency or quantum structure, but that they could become self-animated.”
In other words, Lucifer agreed that he was no longer going to create soul-carriers that would house the spirit-souls of angels in the material realm. Instead, he would create soul-less beings, what we today call androids or Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents. Lucifer called these AI agents the Animus. (Curiously, mankind is headed the same direction today: we are also busy working on “thinking robots”. The Luciferian syndrome is abroad in the land.)
The Paal Taal conceded to Lucifer’s wishes but once again warned him that the law of karma would still come to bear: Providence was going to hold him accountable for whatever distortions and corruption the Animus brought to all sentient creation. Lucifer had to bear in mind that the Animus did not have a soul and therefore were entirely blameless for whatever wrongs they wrought. It was Lucifer who would bear the full brunt of all their misdeeds.
LUCIFER’S THIRD FORCE
The Animus became the Third Force in Lucifer’s scheme to advance his diabolical agenda for this fake universe he had created. They were artificial in every respect – artificial intelligence, artificial building blocks, and even a programmed artificial conscience, which the phenomenally brilliant Lucifer devised for them to instill a kind of herd mentality.
Looking at the Animus, one would never get the impression they were androids. Lucifer fashioned them in such a way that their exterior appearance looked very organic, just like you and me. Even the feel of their body, their voice, their gestures, etc, appeared very real. But underneath, they were total machines. They were also very intellectual, by far more brilliant like humans are today. Their artificial brains processed thought like the computer’s CPU. They were so intelligent they were capable of inventing technology which performed wonders. But since they were machines, they lacked emotion and empathy and so could do outrageously harmful things to sentient beings completely unmindful of how the latter felt.
As machines, the Animus never got sick at all. The harm of pathogens to them was completely irrelevant. And again as machines, they lived forever for as long as they were properly maintained. If something went wrong with them, it was simply removed and replaced with another artificial spare part just like we do with machines. However, the Animus were liable to die despite their being non-biological. This could happen if they were deliberately utterly destroyed or were involved in an accident where it was impossible to electronically reconstruct them. Once that happened, that was the end of them and they were simply scrapped: no funeral, no burial, no last rites.
Since the Animus were not biological, they did not continue to exist after death like we sentient beings do. But as super-intelligent androids, they were aware of their fate and therefore obsessively sought to reverse this. Thus, they began to experiment, first, with the DNA of Reptilians and Grays and later with that of humanoids. They set out to reconstruct their bodies by adding the DNA of sentient beings to their underlying, sub-atomic components in the silly hope that they would come up with a vessel to which souls would be capable of attaching. In other words, they sought to create a viable soul-carrier that would make it possible for them to survive death and therefore join the never-ending cycle of cosmic evolution of which we are a part.
Says Jamisson Neruda: “The Animus are a synthetic race. A species that can clone itself and fabricate more and more of its population to serve the purpose of its colonisation program. However, it desires more than the expansion of its empire. It desires to become a soul-carrier – something reserved for pure biological organisms. Synthetic organisms are not able to carry the higher frequencies of soul, which absolutely require an organic nervous system … The Animus want to expand throughout the universe and develop their organic nature through genetic reengineering. They want to become soul-carriers in order to achieve immortality. They also want to prove what they already believe, that they are superior to all other pure organics.”
Sadly, the Animus have to date not succeeded in ensouling themselves since being artificial organisms, they have no energetic connection to First Source and have no energetic connection even to the archangel Lucifer who invented them. At the same time, they haven’t given up. They are still at it. It is a wild goose chase really since they simply will never succeed. But they have been very effective instruments of Lucifer’s subversive cosmic agenda in that he can easily programme them to fulfill any whim of his Reptilians and Grays will not be in position to carry out. Some of the short Grays former abductees have encountered in the West were created by the Animus. Like the Animus, the short Grays are androids but of less sophisticated ability.
THE ANIMUS WERE HERE …
The Animus, who are based in the Whirlpool Galaxy, have become a very powerful force in the universe and have been the subject of several movies since as early as the 1950s as part of the Illuminati ploy to condition us for an eventual appearance of these synthetic beings on our planet some day. They include The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951); The Terminator (1984) starring Arnold Schwarzenegger; Star Trek The Next Generation Generations television series (1987-1994); Star Wars (1987); Robocop (1987); Cyborg (1989) starring Jean Claude Van Damme; AI Artificial Intelligence (2001); A Space Odyssey (2001); and I Robot (2004) starring Will Smith.
According to Jamisson Neruda, the Animus last visited Earth 300 million years ago but “they didn’t find anything present on our planet to cause them to invest the time and resources to colonise our planet”. They were scheduled to return in 2011/2012 (the year 2012 was by far a very significant year on many levels than most people realise). Their return was to be heralded by space probes in the void surrounding Earth. The intention of the Animus is to colonise Earth, initially in a subtle as opposed to a much more direct way. They are after our human genetics: given that they do not proceed to higher realms of existence like we do but cease to exist altogether once they are destroyed, their aim is to either gradually turn us into soul-less beings like they are, that is, sabotage us, or steal our genetics so they too can be soul-carriers. Jamisson Neruda says, “The Animus desire to own this planet in order to own its genetics.
Their intention is not completely understood, but it’s not to kill our animal populations or the human species. It has more to do with genetic engineering and how their species can be modified to enable it to house a spiritual consciousness. They want unfettered access to our DNA in order to conduct experiments.” I think Neruda is being economical with the truth here. It’s not only our genetics the Animus are after but our total corruption as spiritual beings as well.
Through what is called Remote Viewing or Psychic Spying (using one’s astral or spiritual body to investigate happenings in the cosmos), Fifteen, the super-intelligent head of the Labyrinth Group, found that the Animus were present on several other planets in our galaxy were humanoids dwelt and the Paal Taal had not bothered to flash them out. He therefore decided that the only way we could protect ourselves from the clutches of the Animus was by way of a Time Travel device, which he called Blank Slate Technology, or BST (see Zeta Series for more details).
Now, Time Travel is observatory only. That is to say, when you travel back to the past, you can witness events that took place during the time of Christ, for instance, but only as a spectator: you cannot participate in those events and alter their course. You cannot intervene. Participatory Time Travel, which BST is, is what Fifteen has been working on since 1963 and seemingly continues to work on to date. In order for BST to work, you first have to establish what are called appropriate Intervention Points. These are major, epoch-making events such as 911 or World War II. Once you succeed in somewhat altering the trajectory of these events, you can change the course of what we ordinarily call future events, the future being either where we are now or where we will be in the years ahead.
By the time Jamisson Neruda defected from the Labyrinth Group in 1997, Fifteen had identified about 8 Intervention Points relating to when Earth was selected as a target to colonise by the Animus. His aim was therefore to use this Time Travel mechanism to go back into the history of our galaxy and onto the planet of the Animus, then impose a new memory on their leadership to divert them from colonising Earth. Whether he succeeded in doing that is not known.
… BUT HAVEN’T THEY ALREADY MADE A COMEBACK?
Unfortunately, Fifteen’s Time Travel device cannot stop the Animus. This is because they are already here anyway through human-Reptilian proxies who are in charge of high impact R&D in the Western world in the main. Have you ever heard of what has come to be known as transhumanism? This is an Illuminati plan, now very advanced, to create a cyborg-human that is part-biological and part-technological as they have been signaling to us through movies over the last 50-plus years. The Illuminati refer to this, man’s ultimate fate, as “the post-human race”. Mankind is being remade into a biological robot, which is the first step to finally turn him into a soul-less android Animus-style.
Efforts in this direction are multi-pronged. Harvard University scientists have developed a cyborg skin, which blends electronics with biological tissue. Google is developing artificial brain technology that can learn and act without any human input. The US’s Defence Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) has already served notice that it is in the process of creating a US army wholly comprising of half-human, half-machine soldiers in partnership with Boston Dynamics. Early this year, I watched a documentary on Fareed Zechariah’s CNN programme called GPS. The documentary, titled Moonshots for the 21st Century, showed how in the next ten years human body parts will be manufactured using high-tech machines in a matter of minutes to replace a dysfunctional organ in the human body. These artificial parts will be made from a mixture of living matter and non-living matter.
The Gnostics, a first century movement that best understood the world and of whom Jesus was a member, did write about the Animus, Reptilians, and Grays in their Nag Hammandi Texts, which were discovered in Egypt in December 1945. The blanket term they used to describe these Luciferian beings was archons, which paraphrased means “the real, con rulers of this world”.
The Gnostics documented that the cosmos was not real but a “simulation” of the real one and that it was created by the archons. Some of these archons were “inorganic”, which is a reference to the Animus, and some were made from “smokeless” or “highly luminous” fire”, obviously a reference to Lucifer, the “Angel of Light” and his fellow fallen angels. The Gnostics say the creator of this fake universe was the “Demiurge”, meaning “one who explores the vast expanse of space”. This of course is none other Lucifer the governor of this artificial universe he created. The biblical Jehovah, who the Gnostics called Yaldabaoth, was fingered as being in service to the Demiurge. The apostle Paul referred to the Demiurge administrative structure as “powers and principalities” (EPHESIANS 6:12).
In the highly illuminating Matrix series of three movies, the forces who controlled the world mankind lived in were not biological or angelic beings: they were cyborgs, like the Animus. They controlled it both from outside it and through participating in it. The cyborgs referred to our world as the Matrix, meaning a computer-generated fake world.
The Wachowski brothers (who made the movie) were dead right: we live in a Matrix universe in which Reptilians, Grays, and the Animus hold sway at the behest of their god Lucifer.
NEXT WEEK: HUMANOIDS FALL FOR LUCIFER’S TRICK
Columns
GONE FISHING
In recent years, using personal devices in working environments has become so commonplace it now has its own acronym, BOYD (Bring Your Own Device). But as employees skip between corporate tools and personal applications on their own devices, their actions introduce a number of possible risks that should be managed and mitigated with careful consideration. Consider these examples:
Si-lwli, a small family-run business in Wales, is arguably as niche a company as you could find, producing talking toys used to promote the Welsh language. Their potential market is small, with only some 300,000 Welsh language speakers in the world and in reality the business is really more of a hobby for the husband-and-wife team, who both still have day jobs. Yet, despite still managing to be successful in terms of sales, the business is now fighting for survival after recently falling prey to cybercriminals. Emails between Si-Iwli and their Chinese suppliers were intercepted by hackers who altered the banking details in the correspondence, causing Si-Iwli to hand over £18,000 (around P ¼ m) to the thieves. That might not sound much to a large enterprise, but to a small or medium business it can be devastating.
Another recent SMB hacking story which appeared in the Wall Street Journal concerned Innovative Higher Ed Consulting (IHED) Inc, a small New York start-up with a handful of employees. IHED didn’t even have a website, but fraudsters were able to run stolen credit card numbers through the company’s payment system and reverse the charges to the tune of $27,000, around the same loss faced by Si-Iwli. As the WSJ put it, the hackers completely destroyed the company, forcing its owners to fold.
And in May 2019, the city of Baltimore’s computer system was hit by a ransomware attack, with hackers using a variant called RobinHood. The hack, which has lasted more than a month, paralysed the computer system for city employees, with the hackers demanding a payment in Bitcoin to give access back to the city.
Of course, hackers target governments or business giants but small and medium businesses are certainly not immune. In fact, 67% of SMBs reported that they had experienced a cyber attack across a period of 12 months, according to a 2018 survey carried out by security research firm Ponemon Institute. Additionally, Verizon issued a report in May 2019 that small businesses accounted for 43% of its reported data breaches. Once seen as less vulnerable than PCs, smartphone attacks are on the rise, with movements like the Dark Caracal spyware campaign underlining the allure of mobile devices to hackers. Last year, the US Federal Trade Commission released a statement calling for greater education on mobile security, coming at a time when around 42% of all Android devices are believed to not carry the latest security updates.
This is an era when employees increasingly use their smartphones for work-related purposes so is your business doing enough to protect against data breaches on their employees’ phones? The SME Cyber Crime Survey 2018 carried out for risk management specialists AON showed that more than 80% of small businesses did not view this as a threat yet if as shown, 67% of SMBs were said to have been victims of hacking, either the stats are wrong or business owners are underestimating their vulnerability. A 2019 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers suggests the latter, stating that the majority of global businesses are unprepared for cyber attacks.
Consider that a workstation no longer means a desk in an office: It can be a phone in the back of a taxi or Uber; a laptop in a coffee shop, or a tablet in an airport lounge. Wherever the device is used, employees can potentially install applications that could be harmful to your business, even from something as seemingly insignificant as clicking on an accidental download or opening a link on a phishing email. Out of the physical workplace, your employees’ activities might not have the same protections as they would on a company-monitored PC.
Yet many businesses not only encourage their employees to work remotely, but assume working from coffee shops, bookstores, and airports can boost employees’ productivity. Unfortunately, many remote hot spots do not provide secure Wi-Fi so if your employee is accessing their work account on unsecured public Wi-Fi, sensitive business data could be at risk. Furthermore, even if your employee uses a company smartphone or has access to company data through a personal mobile device, there is always a chance data could be in jeopardy with a lost or stolen device, even information as basic as clients’ addresses and phone numbers.
BOYDs are also at risk from malware designed to harm and infect the host system, transmittable to smartphones when downloading malicious third-party apps. Then there is ransomware, a type of malware used by hackers to specifically take control of a system’s data, blocking access or threatening to release sensitive information unless a ransom is paid such as the one which affected Baltimore. Ransomware attacks are on the increase, predicted to occur every 14 seconds, potentially costing billions of dollars per year.
Lastly there is phishing – the cyber equivalent of the metaphorical fishing exercise – whereby cybercriminals attempt to obtain sensitive data –usernames, passwords, credit card details –usually through a phoney email designed to look legitimate which directs the user to a fraudulent website or requests the data be emailed back directly. Most of us like to think we could recognize a phishing email when we see it, but these emails have become more sophisticated and can come through other forms of communication such as messaging apps.
Bottom line is to be aware of the potential problems with BOYDs and if in doubt, consult your IT security consultants. You can’t put the own-device genie back in the bottle but you can make data protection one of your three wishes!
Columns
“I Propose to Diana Tonight”
About five days before Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed landed in Paris, General Atiku, a certain Edward Williams was taking a walk in a woods in the Welsh town of Mountain Ash. Williams, then 73, was a psychic of some renown. He had in the past foretold assassination attempts on US President Ronald Reagan, which occurred on March 30, 1981, and Pope John Paul II, which came to pass on May 13, 1981.
As he trudged the woods, Williams had a sudden premonition that pointed to Diana’s imminent fate as per Christopher Andersen’s book The Day Diana Died. “When the vision struck me, it was as if everything around me was obscured and replaced by shadowy figures,” Williams was later to reminisce. “In the middle was the face of Princess Diana. Her expression was sad and full of pathos. She was wearing what looked like a floral dress with a short dark cardigan. But it was vague. I went cold with fear and knew it was a sign that she was in danger.”
Williams hastily beat a retreat to his home, which he shared with his wife Mary, and related to her his presentiment, trembling like an aspen leaf as he did so. “I have never seen him so upset,” Mary recounted. “He felt he was given a sign and when he came back from his walk he was deeply shaken.”
The following day, Williams frantically sauntered into a police station to inform the police of his premonition. The officer who attended to him would have dismissed him as no more than a crackpot but he treated him seriously in view of the accuracy of his past predictions. He took a statement and immediately passed it on to the Special Branch Investigative Unit.
The report read as follows:
“On 27 August, at 14:12 hrs, a man by the name of Edward Williams came to Mountain Ash police station. He said he was a psychic and predicted that Princess Diana was going to die. In previous years, he has predicted that the Pope and Ronald Reagan were going to be the victims of assassination attempts. On both occasions he was proved to be correct. Mr Williams appeared to be quite normal.”
Williams, General, was spot-on as usual: four days later, the princess was no more.
Meanwhile, General, even as Dodi and Diana were making their way to the Fayed-owned Ritz Hotel in central Paris, British newspapers were awash with headlines that suggested Diana was kind of deranged. Writes Andrew Morton in Diana in Pursuit of Love: “In The Independent Diana was described as ‘a woman with fundamentally nothing to say about anything’. She was ‘suffering from a form of arrested development’. ‘Isn’t it time she started using her head?’ asked The Mail on Sunday. The Sunday Mirror printed a special supplement entitled ‘A Story of Love’; The News of the World claimed that William had demanded that Diana should split from Dodi: ‘William can’t help it, he just doesn’t like the man.’ William was reportedly ‘horrified’ and ‘doesn’t think Mr Fayed is good for his mother’ – or was that just the press projecting their own prejudices? The upmarket Sunday Times newspaper, which had first serialised my biography of the princess, now put her in the psychiatrist’s chair for daring to be wooed by a Muslim. The pop-psychologist Oliver James put Diana ‘On the Couch’, asking why she was so ‘depressed’ and desperate for love. Other tabloids piled in with dire prognostications – about Prince Philip’s hostility to the relationship, Diana’s prospect of exile, and the social ostracism she would face if she married Dodi.”
DIANA AND DODI AT THE RITZ
Before Diana and Dodi departed the Villa Windsor sometime after 16 hrs, General, one of Dodi’s bodyguards Trevor Rees-Jones furtively asked Diana as to what the programme for the evening was. This Trevor did out of sheer desperation as Dodi had ceased and desisted from telling members of his security detail, let alone anyone else for that matter, what his onward destination was for fear that that piece of information would be passed on to the paparazzi. Diana kindly obliged Trevor though her response was terse and scarcely revealing. “Well, eventually we will be going out to a restaurant”, that was all Diana said. Without advance knowledge of exactly what restaurant that was, Trevor and his colleagues’ hands were tied: they could not do a recce on it as was standard practice for the security team of a VIP principal. Dodi certainly, General, was being recklessly by throwing such caution to the winds.
At about 16:30, Diana and Dodi drew up at the Ritz Hotel, where they were received by acting hotel manager Claude Roulet. The front entrance of the hotel was already crawling with paparazzi, as a result of which the couple took the precaution of using the rear entrance, where hopefully they would make their entry unperturbed and unmolested. The first thing they did when they were ensconced in the now $10,000 a night Imperial Suite was to spend some time on their mobiles and set about touching base with friends, relations, and associates. Diana called at least two people, her clairvoyant friend Rita Rogers and her favourite journalist Richard Kay of The Daily Mail.
Rita, General, was alarmed that Diana had proceeded to venture to Paris notwithstanding the warning she had given Dodi and herself in relation to what she had seen of him in the crystal ball when the couple had consulted her. When quizzed as to what the hell she indeed was doing in Paris at that juncture, Diana replied that she and Dodi had simply come to do some shopping, which though partially true was not the material reason they were there. “But Diana, remember what I told Dodi,” Rita said somewhat reprovingly. Diana a bit apprehensively replied, “Yes I remember. I will be careful. I promise.” Well, she did not live up to her promise as we shall soon unpack General.
As for Richard Kay, Diana made known to him that, “I have decided I am going to radically change my life. I am going to complete my obligations to charities and to the anti-personnel land mines cause, but in November I want to completely withdraw from formal public life.”
Once she was done with her round of calls, Diana went down to the hair saloon by the hotel swimming pool to have her hair washed and blow-dried ahead of the scheduled evening dinner.
THE “TELL ME YES” RING IS DELIVERED
Since the main object of their Paris trip was to pick up the “Tell Me Yes” engagement ring Dodi had ordered in Monte Carlo a week earlier, Dodi decided to check on Repossi Jewellery, which was right within the Ritz prencincts, known as the Place Vendome. It could have taken less than a minute for Dodi to get to the store on foot but he decided to use a car to outsmart the paparazzi invasion. He was driven there by Trevor Rees-Jones, with Alexander Kez Wingfield and Claude Roulet following on foot, though he entered the shop alone.
The Repossi store had closed for the holiday season but Alberto Repossi, accompanied by his wife and brother-in-law, had decided to travel all the way from his home in Monaco and momentarily open it for the sake of the potentially highly lucrative Dodi transaction. Alberto, however, disappointed Dodi as the ring he had chosen was not the one he produced. The one he showed Dodi was pricier and perhaps more exquisite but Dodi was adamant that he wanted the exact one he had ordered as that was what Diana herself had picked. It was a ploy on the part of Repossi to make a real killing on the sale, his excuse to that effect being that Diana deserved a ring tha was well worthy of her social pedigree. With Dodi having expressed disaffection, Repossi rendered his apologies and assured Dodi he would make the right ring available shortly, whereupon Dodi repaired back to the hotel to await its delivery. But Dodi did insist nonetheless that the pricier ring be delivered too in case it appealed to Diana anyway.
Repossi delivered the two rings an hour later. They were collected by Roulet. On inspecting them, Dodi chose the very one he had seen in Monte Carlo, apparently at the insistence of Diana. There is a possibility that Diana, who was very much aware of her public image and was not comfortable with ostentatious displays of wealth, may have deliberately shown an interest in a less expensive engagement ring. It may have been a purely romantic as opposed to a prestigious choice for her.
The value of the ring, which was found on a wardrobe shelf in Dodi’s apartment after the crash, has been estimated to be between $20,000 and $250,000 as Repossi has always refused to be drawn into revealing how much Dodi paid for it. The sum, which enjoyed a 25 percent discount, was in truth paid for not by Dodi himself but by his father as was the usual practice.
Dodi was also shown Repossi’s sketches for a bracelet, a watch, and earrings which he proposed to create if Diana approved of them.
DIANA AND DODI GUSH OVER IMMINENT NUPTIALS
At about 7 pm, Dodi and Diana left the Ritz and headed for Dodi’s apartment at a place known as the Arc de Trompe. They went there to properly tog themselves out for the scheduled evening dinner. They spent two hours at the luxurious apartment. As usual, the ubiquitous paparazzi were patiently waiting for them there.
As they lingered in the apartment, Dodi beckoned over to his butler Rene Delorm and showed him the engagement ring. “Dodi came into my kitchen,” Delorm relates. “He looked into the hallway to check that Diana couldn’t hear and reached into his pocket and pulled out the box … He said, ‘Rene, I’m going to propose to the princess tonight. Make sure that we have champagne on ice when we come back from dinner’.” Rene described the ring as “a spectacular diamond encrusted ring, a massive emerald surrounded by a cluster of diamonds, set on a yellow and white gold band sitting in a small light-grey velvet box”.
Just before 9 pm, Dodi called the brother of his step-father, Hassan Yassen, who also was staying at the Ritz that night, and told him that he hoped to get married to Diana by the end of the year.
Later that same evening, both Dodi and Diana would talk to Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi’s dad, and make known to him their pre-nuptial intentions. “They called me and said we’re coming back (to London) on Sunday (August 31) and on Monday (September 1) they are
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RAMADAN – The Blessed Month of Fasting
Ramadan is the fasting month for Muslims, where over one billion Muslims throughout the world fast from dawn to sunset, and pray additional prayers at night. It is a time for inner reflection, devotion to Allah, and self-control. It is the ninth month in the Islamic calendar. As you read this Muslims the world over have already begun fasting as the month of Ramadan has commenced (depending on the sighting of the new moon).
‘The month of Ramadan is that in which the Qur’an was revealed as guidance for people, in it are clear signs of guidance and Criterion, therefore whoever of you who witnesses this month, it is obligatory on him to fast it. But whoever is ill or traveling let him fast the same number of other days, God desires ease for you and not hardship, and He desires that you complete the ordained period and glorify God for His guidance to you, that you may be grateful”. Holy Qur’an (2 : 185)
Fasting during Ramadan is one of the five pillars upon which the structure of Islam is built. The other four are: the declaration of one’s belief in Allah’s oneness and in the message of Muhammad (PBUH); regular attendance to prayer; payment of zakaat (obligatory charity); and the pilgrimage to Mecca.
As explained in an earlier article, fasting includes total abstinence from eating, drinking, smoking, refraining from obscenity, avoiding getting into arguments and including abstaining from marital relations, from sunrise to sunset. While fasting may appear to some as difficult Muslims see it as an opportunity to get closer to their Lord, a chance to develop spiritually and at the same time the act of fasting builds character, discipline and self-restraint.
Just as our cars require servicing at regular intervals, so do Muslims consider Ramadan as a month in which the body and spirit undergoes as it were a ‘full service’. This ‘service’ includes heightened spiritual awareness both the mental and physical aspects and also the body undergoing a process of detoxification and some of the organs get to ‘rest’ through fasting.
Because of the intensive devotional activity fasting, Ramadan has a particularly high importance, derived from its very personal nature as an act of worship but there is nothing to stop anyone from privately violating Allah’s commandment of fasting if one chooses to do so by claiming to be fasting yet eating on the sly. This means that although fasting is obligatory, its observance is purely voluntary. If a person claims to be a Muslim, he is expected to fast in Ramadan.
The reward Allah gives for proper fasting is very generous. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) quotes Allah as saying: “All actions done by a human being are his own except fasting, which belongs to Me and I will reward it accordingly.” We are also told by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) that the reward for proper fasting is admittance into heaven.
Fasting earns great reward when it is done in a ‘proper’ manner. This is because every Muslim is required to make his worship perfect. For example perfection of fasting can be achieved through restraint of one’s feelings and emotions. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said that when fasting, a person should not allow himself to be drawn into a quarrel or a slanging match. He teaches us: “On a day of fasting, let no one of you indulge in any obscenity, or enter into a slanging match. Should someone abuse or fight him, let him respond by saying: ‘I am fasting!’”
This high standard of self-restraint fits in well with fasting, which is considered as an act of self-discipline. Islam requires us to couple patience with voluntary abstention from indulgence in our physical desires. The purpose of fasting helps man to attain a high degree of sublimity, discipline and self-restraint. In other words, this standard CAN BE achieved by every Muslim who knows the purpose of fasting and strives to fulfill it.
Fasting has another special aspect. It makes all people share in the feelings of hunger and thirst. In normal circumstances, people with decent income may go from one year’s end to another without experiencing the pangs of hunger which a poor person may feel every day of his life. Such an experience helps to draw the rich one’s conscience nearer to needs of the poor. A Muslim is encouraged to be more charitable and learns to give generously for a good cause.
Fasting also has a universal or communal aspect to it. As Muslims throughout the world share in this blessed act of worship, their sense of unity is enhanced by the fact that every Muslim individual joins willingly in the fulfillment of this divine commandment. This is a unity of action and purpose, since they all fast in order to be better human beings. As a person restrains himself from the things he desires most, in the hope that he will earn Allah’s pleasure, self-discipline and sacrifice become part of his nature.
The month of Ramadan can aptly be described as a “season of worship.” Fasting is the main aspect of worship in this month, because people are more attentive to their prayers, read the Qur’an more frequently and also strive to improve on their inner and outer character. Thus, their devotion is more complete and they feel much happier in Ramadan because they feel themselves to be closer to their Creator.