Month 10, Day 16: Ramadan (Part 2)

Okay, so here’s my humble opinion: Ramadan kind of sucks.

I made it through the first day without eating or drinking or doing anything wrong (I did curse twice, but I think I get a pass from Allah on that because it happened while my boyfriend and his friends were sitting right next to me, drinking beer and loudly enjoying their big, juicy hamburgers, knowing I was sitting there starving—seriously. Why are men so clueless and inconsiderate?).

But I made it through—and it was pure hell. By 11:00 a.m., I had a headache, probably from lack of water, and it lasted until well into the night, even after I had had plenty of water to drink. I was shaky and weak most of the day—since I tend to get a tad hypoglycemic when I don’t eat at regular intervals. And I was so edgy and exhausted that I barely managed to make it through a single chapter of the book I’m supposed to be editing.

I don’t see how anybody could possibly be productive when they’re dehydrated and have shaky limbs from low blood sugar. If the whole point of fasting is to “focus”—on God, on your past sins, on anything—I don’t think forbidding even water is the way to achieve that focus.

It’s not that I’m just a glutton (although I admit I can be). I’ve fasted before, but I’ve never done a fast that even prohibited water, so I had no idea it would affect me so severely.

Frankly, I think the whole thing is, well, kind of stupid. I certainly wasn’t focused on God. I was focused on trying not to feel hungry, and on trying to ease the muscle cramps I was getting (I always get them after going a few hours without water). If anything, I was focusing on how much I dislike any God that would require such ridiculous, pointless suffering of his people.

Maybe it’s horrible, but I really think it might be true: I don’t like Allah. To be fair, I didn’t like the God of Christianity, either (and I’m worried I won’t much like the God of Judaism next month, since they’re all supposed to be the same guy).

Here’s the thing: If Allah/God is the one true God, why would he/she/it create me to have this fundamental distaste for him/her/it? I imagine devout Muslims would say that I’m under the influence of Shaytan (essentially the Muslim version of Satan), but if you look at the evidence objectively, on the whole, I’m a better person than a lot of people. I work hard, I’m nice to just about everybody (even those who treat me badly), I pay my taxes, I observe religious rites. I’m really not a major sinner.

But I do break some of the “rules,” and that means, in the eyes of Allah, I am a sinner. So I don’t like this Muslim version of God much at all. And it’s not that I dislike the “idea” of God in general, like atheists do—after all, I loved the Hindu and pagan gods, like Ganesha and Sarasvati, and I really liked Shinto’s goddess Benzaiten. I just don’t like mean gods, and Allah seems awfully mean to me.

I don’t want to be punished for petty little things that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, like what I choose to eat (or when I choose to eat it). I want to decide for myself how to live and work and love. And I want God to appreciate that I’m still a good person, no matter what I eat or who I have sex with or whether my hair is visible to men.

A God who cares about silly things like that, and not about what kind of a person I really am, must not be very powerful—and must not be very smart. If he/she/it can’t tell good people from bad people without a checklist of petty rules, then I’m a lot closer to omniscient than God is, because I can generally judge someone’s character accurately within the first ten minutes of conversation.

So I don’t like this version of God, who says I’m not following the rules if I slip up and eat pork but who seems to have no problem with crazy devout “rule-followers” who do truly horrible things like kill anyone who doesn’t believe the same things they do.

But I guess whether I like Allah or not isn’t the point. This whole project is about experiencing everything each faith is about—even those things I think are insane or just plain stupid. And to sum up, what I feel about following the rules of Ramadan is the following: tired, angry, and a lot like a sheep, with no mind of my own. I really can’t wait for this month to be over.

I know, I know. I’m ranting incoherently. But you’d be ranting, too, if you were a strong-willed person being forced to live like a mindless drone, not even being given enough independence of thought to determine when your own body needs a sip of water. You’d also be as grumpy as I am if you were fasting for Ramadan and had overslept this morning and missed your pre-dawn meal. So cut me some slack.