The Human Cohesion Project — 4 March 2025

Fasting is often understood in terms of absence — the absence of food, of water, of indulgence. But what if it is also about presence? The presence of hunger, of breath, of heightened awareness.

In the still hours of fasting, when the body begins to feel the weight of restraint, something else emerges: a deepened sense of time. The usual rhythms of the day — meals, coffee breaks, moments of casual consumption — are no longer there to structure experience. Instead, fasting becomes a way of confronting time itself, of sitting with what arises in the pauses between hunger and prayer.

The Quran describes the human being as created from clay (tin) and infused with divine breath (ruh). Breath, in Islamic and Sufi traditions, is not merely physiological, it is the thread that connects life with spirit. The Arabic word nafas (breath) shares its root with tanafus (aspiration) and munafasah (competition), implying that breath is not passive; it is something one can work with, something that can be refined. In the practice of dhikr (remembrance), breath becomes synchronised with divine repetition, aligning the body with something greater than itself.

Fasting, then, is not only about restraining the body but about deepening presence in the body. It is an invitation to listen: to breath, to longing, to silence.

And yet, presence is one of the rarest things in today’s world. We live in an era of constant distraction. Our attention pulled in multiple directions by notifications, news cycles, and the endless scrolling of digital existence. The hunger we often fail to acknowledge is not just for food but for stillness, for slowness, for a different relationship with time.

As war, displacement, and crises unfold in different parts of the world, time weighs differently on different people. For some, fasting is a choice; for others, hunger is an imposed reality. For those in Gaza, Sudan, and countless other places of suffering, absence is not a spiritual exercise — it is survival. To fast with presence, then, is also to fast with awareness. To let hunger not be an isolated act but a recognition of a world that is deeply interconnected.

Today, perhaps the question is not only what you are fasting from, but how you are fasting. Are you fasting with presence? With breath? With awareness of the world around you?

Ramadan Kareem. May this be a month of deep listening.

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