Clash of the Titans
Columns
Benson C Saili
THIS EARTH, MY BROTHER…
Alien humanoids and native Reptilians almost annihilate each other over the creation of native humans
The term “Elohim” is a familiar one. On my part, I first encountered it in the Bible, in GENESIS 1:26 in particular, which reads, “And the Elohim said, ‘Let us make man in our own image and likeness’". Of course in our distorted English versions of the Bible, the term Elohim is rendered as “God”. This is downright fraudulent. Elohim in Hebrew, the tongue in which the Old Testament was originally written, is a plural term. The singular is “El” or “Eloah”. Therefore, even if its secondary meaning was that of “God”, the right translation should have been “gods”.
If like me you are an avid pundit of the saga of planet Earth, you will be aware by now that the “gods” who are the subject of the Old Testament are not the same as the First Source, God proper who created us at the spirit-soul level through the Paal Taal (the first beings God created and who in turn created us as spirit-souls). The Old Testament gods are Aliens, scientifically and technologically advanced flesh-and-blood beings from other star systems. These Aliens, who masqueraded to primitive mankind as gods, the Sumerians referred to as the Anunnaki. The term Anunnaki means “Beings from outer space”, which is exactly what the term Alien primarily suggests. It is these same Anunnaki who are referred to as Elohim in the Genesis scripture quoted above.
What is the meaning of the term Elohim (also rendered “Illojim” in some accounts)? Over the ages, Elohim has given rise to a series of derivative meanings like all daily-parlance words do. Its original meaning, however, was "Divine Mother”. In time, it came to mean “People of the Divine Mother”, that is, beings from outer space. Elohim was “ELU-OME”. Elu, or Ilu, was a euphemism for a woman’s reproductive orifice. It actually meant “a cut”, a fitting description of a female’s womanhood. Ome meant “Mother Goddess”. The Mother Goddess as we now know was the Orion Queen. Our Solar System is part of the Orion Empire, which explains why the Orion Queen was so central a deity to primordial mankind.
Now, the Anunnaki were so light-skinned they actually shone in the dark. They “elu-ome-nated”. As such, Elu or Ilu, the shortened forms of Elu-Ome, became synonymous with “shining ones”. The Anunnaki were also very tall, upwards of seven feet. Ilu accordingly became synonymous with “tallie”, a very tall fellow. The Anunnaki imparted a great deal of knowledge to mankind. Ilu thus became synonymous with ‘Illuminati”, or people who possess special, priviledged knowledge. The Anunnaki not only showed off pieces of equipment which gave light in the dark but they also travelled in rockets which blasted off in a blaze of fire and wielded weapons which belched fire. Ilu therefore became synonymous with fire, flames, and light in general. To primitive mankind, Anunnaki technology came across as magic. Ilu accordingly became synonymous with “wizard”. The Anunnaki/Elohim were “Ba Loi”, as witches are called in Setswana. Because the Anunnaki were generally fearsome or otherwise held in awe, the term Ilu also came to mean, "He who is the object of fear or reverence,” or "He with whom one who is afraid takes refuge”. That’s why the prophet Job would say, “God is fearsome” (JOB 25:2) and the Psalmist would say, “The Lord is my refuge and fortress” (PSALM 91:2).
Yet the Anunnaki (who we will dwell upon at length soon) were not one and the same people. Anunnaki was simply a blanket term for Aliens. The Anunnaki were humanoids (human-like Aliens) but of various origins. Some came from Sirius and the Orion star system. Others came from Procyon. Still others came from Aldebaran. The Aldebaran Elohim were the second wave of humanoid Aliens to come to Earth after the Elohim of Procyon. This was about 1.5 million years ago.
ALDEBARAN STAR IGNITES
The Aldebaran Elohim came to Earth 65 million years after the Procyonites left. Whereas the Procyonites had purely come in search of minerals, the Aldebaran Elohim came for a different purpose altogether.
Let us first familiarise ourselves with Aldebaran. Aldebaran (also known as Alpha Tauri) is a giant, orange star in the constellation of Taurus. It is 61 to 65 light years from Earth. The constellation Taurus roughly takes the shape of a bull in the evening sky and Aldebaran marks one of the bull’s eyes. Those who have studied the Anunnaki saga from the Sumerian records will recall that the bull was the symbol of Enlil, the Jehovah of the Bible, because he presided over the astrological Age of Taurus (4380 BC to 2220 BC). As such, the Jews referred to Aldebaran as the Eye of God, as Enlil was their principal god.
At some stage in the distant past, Aldebaran, which is much older than our Sun Sol, ran out of the fuel that powered it, hydrogen, at its core and imploded into the humongous orange star it is today. It expanded to 44 times the diameter of our Sun and became 350 times more luminous than our Sun, making it the brightest star in the Taurus constellation. This phenomenon happens to all stars as they age, when they are between 10 to 12 billion years old. At 5 billion years old, our Sun is in middle-age and so we have no cause yet to spend sleepless nights.
When a star expands, its planetary system is disrupted. All the planets in that system will be swallowed up by the imploded star. That does not mean inhabitants of that planetary system will perish. By the time a star reaches an age where it can implode, the civilisations on its planets are so advanced scientifically and technologically that they would have long evacuated from that planetary system. Note that when a star implodes, it does not do so suddenly. It is a process which builds up for millions of years before it finally reaches crunch time. Hence, the civilisations in that star system will have seen the signs millions of years in advance and would thus have had ample time in which to prepare for such a calamity.
The implosion of Aldebaran happened half a billion years ago and the star remains in this state of conflagration (it will take millions of years before it completely burns out). About a million years prior to the implosion of their star, the Aldebaran Elohim had evacuated from that planetary system and relocated to new homes in other star systems in the Milky Way Galaxy. Some of these new settlements were planets in the Pleiades and the greater Taurian region; others were in the Orion star system. But the Aldebaran Elohim still identified themselves after the star system of their origin, just like black Americans still identify themselves as African-Americans after the continent of their origin.
HUMANOIDS SETTLE ON EARTH
About 1.5 million years ago, the Elohim of Aldebaran origin came to planet Earth. They were not directly coming from Aldebaran since that star system had long become uninhabitable but from one of their later settlements in the Pleiades.
The Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters and Messier 45, are a star cluster consisting of more than 500 stars and are over 440 light years from Earth. They constituted one of the most famous star systems in antiquity and it’s small wonder they are mentioned in the Old Testament in JOB 9:9, JOB 38:31, and AMOS 5:8. Of the 500 planets in the cluster, however, only 9 shine brightest from the point of view of Earth and therefore are the ones that are astronomically the best known. Seven of these 9 planets are referred to as the Seven Sisters, with the other two referred to as the parents of the Seven Sisters. One of the two parent stars is known as Atlas. It was from a planet that revolved around Atlas that the Aldebaran Elohim came from. In time, the Aldebaran Elohim would accordingly become known as the Atlanteans.
The Atlanteans were humanoids like we are but were blonde-haired, blue-eyed, very white skinned, and toweringly tall, upwards of seven feet at the very least. They were so light-skinned they avoided direct sunlight like the plague. When the Atlanteans came to Earth, their aim, like the Procyonites before them, was to colonise it as it was a very beautiful planet and having been designated by the cosmic community as the Milky Way Galaxy’s Living Genetic Library, it was bountifully rich in flora and fauna. Moreover, it was extremely endowed with water and mineral resources. At the time, however, the native Reptilians had long evolved and had taken pride of place on the planet. They were thus the sovereigns of the planet. The Reptilians were particularly concentrated on a continent called Lemuria, which was located in the Pacific Ocean between Asia and Australia to the left and North and South America to the right, and had thriving metropolises far advanced than anything we can conceive of today. They dwelt primarily on the surface of the Earth but had also a subterranean network of cities as a contingency measure in case there was a cataclysm on the surface climate-wise or in relation to a global war with invaders from outer space. Actually, the native Reptilians were so advanced they had colonies on other planets in the Solar System.
In order to set up on the planet, universal rules required that the Atlanteans seek permission from the native Reptilians, who were nationally referred to as Lemurians. Although the Lemurians were possessive of the planet, they didn’t mind co-existing with the Atlanteans. First, there was plenty of room on the planet. Second, the Lemurians didn’t want to provoke an unnecessary war with the Atlanteans. So it was that the Atlanteans were given permission to settle on Earth. Although like the Lemurians the Atlanteans were scattered across the Earth, they were concentrated in one place. This was a continent in the Atlantic Ocean between today’s North America to the left and Europe and Africa to the right. The continent came to be known as Atlantis.
The Atlanteans were much more technologically advanced than the native Reptilians since they were a much older race. So they too built cities on Atlantis that were way out of this world. If you lived in that era, went off planet, and returned today, you would think today’s world is actually a slum. The level of sophistication of the world of that day is beyond description.
HUMANOIDS AND REPTILIANS GO TO WAR
In time, the Atlanteans came to outnumber the Lemurians and eventually became the principal race on the planet as there is power in numbers even at the metaphysical level. You can call this a strategic coup. The Atlanteans were calling the shots on the planet just like Americans do today and the Lemurians did not take kindly to this. It caused friction between the two races which would at some stage lead to war. Meanwhile, the two races lived in a state of perpetual tension. The usurped geopolitical eminence of the Atlanteans left a sour taste in the mouths of Lemurians, who thought they had been done a great injustice.
Now, the Atlanteans at some stage decided to create a species that was similar to them but native to Earth at the same time. This race would be better suited to the climate and energies of Earth than they themselves were and would therefore be better-tuned to it in a range of ways. The new race would also further consolidate the Atlanteans’ right to the control of the planet as it would have both Atlantean and terrestrial genes. This race was to be fashioned from several species of the ape family. The ape species flourished on a continent we today call Africa.
The project was a top-secret one. The Atlanteans didn’t want the Lemurians to get to know about it as it could trigger a bio-engineering race between the two rival races. The project in fact was not going to be conducted on Earth: it was going to be done in the Pleiades, on the Atlanteans’ home planet in the Atlas planetary system. This was deemed essential because the Atlanteans wanted the new species to carry Pleiadien vibrations as well since locality has a significant influence too on the genetics of a species.
The Atlanteans first took 10,000 to 20,000 of the simians to the Pleiades. A few hundreds years later, the simians were brought back to Earth not as simians any more but as pre-humans. But they were very primitive pre-humans with a lot of defects. They simply did not make the grade. The Atlanteans decided to extinct this race and fashion a new, improved one. They repeated the process several times until 700,000 years ago, when they came up with native humans who had speech and could use technology. These humans were deeply indoctrinated by the Atlanteans. For instance, they were told to avoid the Lemurians at all costs. It was stressed to them that Reptilians were evil, that they were diabolical.
Since the secret was now out in the open, the Lemurians knew about it and were both wroth and alarmed. The Lemurian philosophy was that animals should be left to evolve on their own in the fullness of time and not be prematurely upgraded to advanced beings. The Lemurians also feared that if humans, the humanoids indigenous to Earth, proliferated, eventually they would wage war against them and possibly annihilate their ranks and take over the planet as its only authorities. In order to forestall such an eventuality, the Lemurians decided to go to war with the Atlanteans so as to scupper their scheme for the planet.
It was a clash of the Titans. The weapons used were so advanced the two races almost completely extincted each other. The Lemurians had Atlantis sink into the Atlantic Ocean and the Atlanteans had Lemuria sink into the Pacific. Even today, remnants of highly sophisticated cities can be seen on some stretches of the sea bed in either ocean. The human population was completely wiped out and the few Atlanteans who survived returned to the Pleiades. The surviving Lemurians sought refuge in their subterranean dwellings although most of their underground cities had been destroyed by the penetrating, electronic weaponry of the Atlanteans.
For thousands of years, the planet’s surface was practically desolate, with only animals left to roam on the still standing continents.
NEXT WEEK: DEVELOPMENTS IN THE SIRIUS STAR SYSTEM
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
Columns
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.