From curbing consumerism to caring for others, Ramadan has lessons for us all. For Muslims and non-Muslims alike, the core tenets of the holy month can help us achieve communal and personal change. Guardian  3 Apr 2o22 Ramadan is here, and Muslims all around the world are starting a month-long spiritual bootcamp: days spent abstaining from food and drink, and nights passed in prayer and contemplation. Mosques brim with life as they open their doors to the young and the old, familiar faces and new ones standing side by side, reciting the same words as more than a billion others around the globe.

This may be the first Ramadan in two years that we can be together in person, but our homes ache with the absence of those stolen by Covid, and for many this year, iftar meals will be meagre as the cost-of-living crisis takes its toll, with 50% of the country’s Muslims living in poverty. As Ramadan is celebrated in a nation more fractured than ever, it’s not just Muslims who could do with a little of its spirit. It is a common misconception that Ramadan is all about food. In truth, it is about starving the body to feed the soul. By temporarily depriving our bodies of what they need, we forge room for spirituality and introspection, generosity and discipline, to blossom in its place.Maybe we could all do with more of that in our era, where the self is supreme. Self-care and selfies, self-made and self-sufficient – we live in an individualistic age where the I comes before the we. The pandemic gave us a brief respite from that, as we clapped on our doorsteps and made small talk with the people we had previously ignored. But it didn’t last long. We were soon back to avoiding eye contact on the street, and passing homeless people by as if they were invisible.

Ramadan forces Muslims to uphold the importance of community. We share food with neighbours, and give charity within our means: whether a smile to a stranger or cash to those in need. With the cost-of-living crisis so extreme that people are having to decline produce at food banks because they cannot afford the energy to cook them, imagine if it was the social norm to embody the Ramadan spirit and give so freely that, as the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said, even your left hand doesn’t know what your right has given. Imagine if a family forced to choose between heating and eating opened their door to find a tray of home-cooked food on the doorstep, delivered by an anonymous neighbour.

When poverty is inflicted by the state, manufactured through budget cuts and shifting policy, it falls on us to enact change. A famous Hadith reminds us that nobody can call themselves a Muslim if their own stomach is full while their neighbour is hungry. What if we all lived by this sentiment? Wealth distribution is fundamental to the Muslim understanding of social justice.....read on   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/03/consumerism-caring-ramadan-muslims-holy-month