Saleha Begum woke to the voice of Azaan, quickly washing and offering her asar prayers. Her daughter was in the kitchen, preparing masala for pakodas so that her mum could fry them. She had already placed a big jug of sherbet in the freezer to chill. The hour before maghrib was a hustle: women prepared and set table for iftaar while the men were reading their copies of the Holy Book.
Like all the other houses down the lane, Saleha Begum and her family made sure that every moment of the day in Ramadan was spent either offering nafli prayers or reading the Holy Qur’an. Watching television was reduced to the minimal – it was switched on just at 9 p.m. for headlines.
Fast-forward many years ahead, and sometime in the 2000s, there was a sudden shift in trends: Ramadan was no longer a month of prayers and nafils and the time when one offered tarawih (a special Ramadan prayer) and tried to complete reading the holy Qur’an at least once. The Pakistani media zoomed-in its focus on different sorts of cooking shows (a major attraction for women of every household) that offered recipes of ‘Ramadan Special Meals’ so that your family could eat healthy and live healthy.
Needless to mention that since cooking shows were perfectly modest affairs that were in fact, acting as a nutrition guide for everyone out there; watching television in Ramadan eventually made its way into the routines of people – first in late afternoons and then till the time until it was just a little before maghrib.
It would be interesting to note that date – the elementary fruit for iftaar – is rich in essential minerals, vitamins and simple sugars like fructose and dextrose. It instantly helps to replenish and revitalize the body hence the need to have anything to particularly restore energy quite diminishes.
And what was the real cause to stay starved from dawn to dusk, anyway?
Whether we eat or not isn’t the real purpose of fasting – Allah wants to us to realize the effect hunger can have on man, to feel for the poor and most importantly, to fight our nafs and overcome the desires. But apparently, the TV commercials of cooking oils, banaspatis and the entire range of ready-to-cook masalas and other delicacies project quite a contrary image of the Ramadan… It is beginning to sound more like a food festival rather than a month where eating was the last priority of the Muslims.
And today, the Ramadan Special TV shows have reached to the point where having iftaaris with the famous TV celebrities with a backdrop of some Sultan’s court is the priority of most, if not every, common man in the country. And if it’s your kid’s first roza, why not tell the entire world and have him iftaar his first fast on a live TV show!
Please note here that all the great sufis and auliya karaam preferred to hide their good deeds. In words of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, “Allah will give shade to seven kinds of people on the Judgement Day when there will be no shade but His. These seven kinds of people are…. A man who gives charitable gifts so secretly that his left hand does not know what his right hand has given (i.e., nobody knows how much he has given in charity)”.
– Sahih Bukhari
And the fuss is not confined to iftaar timing only, sehr is also ‘celebrated’ live on television channels – so basically the hour when one could be offering tahajjud or reading Qur’an, you have live mullahs and actors (who’ve suddenly become very religious) to tell you about Islam in a whole new perspective.
Had it been confined to the idiot box itself, maybe then the issue would not have been as serious; it would have been a matter of asceticism only. But as every TV channel today runs Ramadan Shows where masses participate and play stupid games, dance even more stupidly to win a motorbike, or LED or just to be a source of a good laugh – our social and religious state is indeed in a sorry plight. Be it before, during or after iftaar, people are glued to the TV or in a struggle to be on it.
It’s high time that we raise our voice and highly condemn the current media practices regarding the holy month of Ramadan. It is not about your nation, your culture, and your language and certainly not about the money (which is obviously the only reason of such content on the TV); it is about being a Muslim, what you mean as a Muslim to the world around you and what you would end up as before Allah on the Day of Judgement.
