--- title: "The Joy of Fasting" description: "Six sessions arguing that Ramadhan is not something to be endured. Most of what gets said about fasting is about withstanding it — the hunger, the thirst, the long afternoons, the count of days remaining. This Saturday series, delivered through Ramadhan 1447, takes a different view entirely: that the month is a journey with a destination, and that treating it as endurance is to arrive at Eid having gone nowhere. It opens with departure. The Qur'an speaks of those who leave their homes migrating toward God, and Imam Khomeini draws a sharp line in Adab as-Salat: with any attachment to the ego still standing, a person can perform every ritual with precision and remain stationary. You can fly to Makkah and go nowhere. The house you are asked to leave is not a building — it is the structure of habit and self-regard built up until the walls felt like the horizon. From there the six sessions move through cleansing — the Qur'an's image of a heart so encrusted with rust that light no longer reflects in it — then nourishment, arguing that God did not set the month aside to starve you but to feed you, on what Imam Khomeini calls the soul's own food. Then discipline, and the enemy most people never suspect: not desire or anger, but habit, the customs so familiar we mistake them for our own personality. The series turns on Laylat al-Qadr, where worship stops being transactional altogether, and closes on Eid with the hardest question of all: when the scaffolding comes down, is anything still standing? Three things distinguish it. A single chain of images — house, mirror, banquet, idol, dye — that each session extends rather than replaces. A reliance on Imam Khomeini, Allamah Tabatabai, Mirza Maliki Tabrizi and Ayatullah Bahjat rather than legal manuals. And a real-time layering of the Islamic calendar onto the fasting month, so the series darkens and resolves exactly as Ramadhan itself does." published_at: "2026-02-14" canonical_url: "https://www.truthpromoters.com/events/the-joy-of-fasting" type: "event" hijri_year: 1447 session_count: 6 --- # The Joy of Fasting Six sessions arguing that Ramadhan is not something to be endured. Most of what gets said about fasting is about withstanding it — the hunger, the thirst, the long afternoons, the count of days remaining. This Saturday series, delivered through Ramadhan 1447, takes a different view entirely: that the month is a journey with a destination, and that treating it as endurance is to arrive at Eid having gone nowhere. It opens with departure. The Qur'an speaks of those who leave their homes migrating toward God, and Imam Khomeini draws a sharp line in Adab as-Salat: with any attachment to the ego still standing, a person can perform every ritual with precision and remain stationary. You can fly to Makkah and go nowhere. The house you are asked to leave is not a building — it is the structure of habit and self-regard built up until the walls felt like the horizon. From there the six sessions move through cleansing — the Qur'an's image of a heart so encrusted with rust that light no longer reflects in it — then nourishment, arguing that God did not set the month aside to starve you but to feed you, on what Imam Khomeini calls the soul's own food. Then discipline, and the enemy most people never suspect: not desire or anger, but habit, the customs so familiar we mistake them for our own personality. The series turns on Laylat al-Qadr, where worship stops being transactional altogether, and closes on Eid with the hardest question of all: when the scaffolding comes down, is anything still standing? Three things distinguish it. A single chain of images — house, mirror, banquet, idol, dye — that each session extends rather than replaces. A reliance on Imam Khomeini, Allamah Tabatabai, Mirza Maliki Tabrizi and Ayatullah Bahjat rather than legal manuals. And a real-time layering of the Islamic calendar onto the fasting month, so the series darkens and resolves exactly as Ramadhan itself does. ## Sessions ### [Session 1 — The Great Migration — From the Self to God](https://www.truthpromoters.com/events/the-great-migration-from-the-self-to-god) *14 February 2026* Ramadhan does not begin with an empty stomach — it begins with someone asking you to leave your own house. The Qur'an speaks of those who leave their homes, migrating toward God — read by the tradition as more than the history of the Prophet's companions leaving Makkah for Madinah. Imam Khomeini, in Adab as-Salat, the Disciplines of Prayer, draws a sharp line: with any attachment to the ego still standing, a person can perform every ritual with precision and remain hadir — present, stationary — rather than musafir, a traveller. You can fly to Makkah and go nowhere. The house you are asked to leave is not a building. It is the structure of habit and self-regard built up until the walls felt like the horizon. Ayatullah Jawadi Amoli names what guards the door: the nafs ammarah, the commanding self, an inner Pharaoh whose daily cry is "feed me, obey me, serve me first." If fasting is a departure, what exactly are we leaving, and what waits on the other side of the wall? What the evening covers The house you can't see. The Qur'anic verse on migration, and Imam Khomeini's distinction between being present in the ego and actually travelling. The idol with your face. Why the tradition calls the self "the mother of all idols", tracing a line from the temple of Prophet Abraham, peace be upon him, to the Pharaoh within. A map with four stages. Allamah Tabatabai's stages of the journey — surrender, faith, migration, struggle — mapped onto the shape of the month. The reward that isn't a reward. The narration in which God says fasting is for Him alone, and He Himself is its reward. ### [Session 2 — The Purification of the Mirror — Cleansing the Heart](https://www.truthpromoters.com/events/the-purification-of-the-mirror-cleansing-the-heart) *21 February 2026* The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him and his family, once told a fasting woman to eat. She had spent the day cursing her servant. When he heard her, he called for food and said, simply, "Eat" — because, he told her, fasting is not merely leaving food and drink; God made that abstinence a barrier against the obscenities of act and speech that actually break a fast. "How few are those who truly fast," he said, "and how many are those who are merely hungry." The session builds toward that narration through two images: a narration likening the five daily prayers to a flowing river at your door, washing away a day's residue, with a warning that a prayer performed without felt purification is valid but not accepted; and rust, the Qur'an's word for a heart so coated in heedlessness that light no longer reflects. Mirza Jawad Maliki Tabrizi lays out three tiers of fasting — of the stomach, the limbs, the heart — and insists that abstaining from food is only the entrance ticket, not the seat at the table. Your fast can be valid and still change nothing — so what is it meant to be cleaning? What the evening covers The river at the door. The narration comparing prayer to a flowing stream, and the gap between a valid act of worship and an accepted one. Rust, not dust. The Qur'anic image of a heart so encrusted that light no longer reflects in it. Three tiers of fasting. Mirza Maliki Tabrizi's map from the fast of the stomach to the fast that guards the tongue and the eyes. The fast that broke without food. The narration of the fasting woman, and what it means for a tongue to undo a stomach's discipline. ### [Session 3 — The Feast of Light — Spiritual Nutrition](https://www.truthpromoters.com/events/the-feast-of-light-spiritual-nutrition) *28 February 2026* God did not set this month aside to starve you — He set it aside to feed you. In the Sha'baniyyah Sermon, the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him and his family, tells the community they have been invited to "the Banquet of God" and made "of the people of God's karamah" — the dignity spoken of when the Qur'an says God ennobled the children of Adam. That dignity, the session argues, is what the month restores: not a reward for suffering, but a homecoming to a station given away one heedless act at a time. If that is the banquet, what is on the table? Imam Khomeini answers in Adab as-Salat: the soul, like the body, has a food, and its food is ma'rifah — direct, experiential knowledge of God, not information about Him. Hunger quiets the body's noise so the soul's appetite can be heard. But even this food can go in without nourishing: worship performed with takalluf, forced and resentful, does not digest. The table is set and the food is real — so why do most of us stop at the bread basket by the door? What the evening covers The invitation you missed. The Sha'baniyyah Sermon's claim that Ramadhan restores karamah, the original dignity of Adam's children. The soul has a food. Imam Khomeini's teaching that ma'rifah nourishes the spirit as bread nourishes the body, and can only be tasted. Eating with a clenched jaw. The narration warning against making worship hateful to yourself. The transparency of a Prophet. Imam Ali, peace be upon him, on Prophet Moses, peace be upon him: so emptied of the world that the green of the herbs he ate showed through his skin. ### [Session 4 — The Sacrifice That Liberates — Breaking the Idol of Habit](https://www.truthpromoters.com/events/the-sacrifice-that-liberates-breaking-the-idol-of-habit) *7 March 2026* By the third week, the exhaustion asks an honest question — why am I doing this to myself? — and the tradition says that question is exactly where the real fast begins. Allamah Tabatabai's Lubb al-Lubab names the enemy most of us never suspect. Not desire, not anger, not sin, but habit — the customs so familiar we mistake them for our own personality. A narration names fear of people's opinion as one of the four pillars of disbelief, and the mystics call the person who has broken free of it majnun, mad, because indifference to praise and blame looks like insanity to those still trapped inside it. Beneath habit sits something worse. The same text calls the self "the Greatest Idol" — the one Prophet Abraham, peace be upon him, prayed to be kept far from, and the one the Prophet Muhammad sought refuge from as hidden association. Imam Ali's answer, peace be upon him, is not destruction but riyadah, training. "It is only my self," he writes, "I am training it" — a horse to be broken in, not killed. If the real enemy is habit, not desire, how do you break an idol wearing your own face? What the evening covers The migration nobody warns you about. Why Allamah Tabatabai includes ordinary social custom among what a wayfarer must leave. The idol you are. The phrase "the self is the Greatest Idol", and why even Abraham needed protection from it. Training the horse, not killing it. Imam Ali's word for disciplining the soul, and what it means to take the reins. A chain with four links. The promise that a closed mouth ends, link by link, in certainty. ### [Session 5 — The Meeting — Laylatul Qadr and the Meeting with God](https://www.truthpromoters.com/events/the-meeting-laylatul-qadr-and-the-meeting-with-god) *14 March 2026* On the most decisive night of the year, you are asked to arrive with nothing to show for it. Imam Ali, peace be upon him, once divided worshippers into three kinds: those who serve from desire, the worship of merchants; those who serve from fear, the worship of slaves; and those who serve from gratitude, the worship of the free. A saying attributed to him goes further — "I did not worship You from fear of Your fire, nor desire for Your paradise, but found You worthy of worship." Ayatullah Bahjat called this the story of the moth and the flame: no argument explains the pull to someone who has not felt it. A narration describes two joys belonging to the one who fasts — at breaking the fast, and at meeting the Lord — with a condition: gorge at iftar and you may trade the second for a larger version of the first. The Ramadhan supplications teach the posture required to meet God at all: not a record of good deeds, but confession of bankruptcy — nothing in hand, and the nothing itself the entrance requirement. What draws a person to prostrate before dawn once reward and punishment are both left behind? What the evening covers Three kinds of worship. Imam Ali's division into merchants, slaves and the free — why only the third has no transaction to explain. The moth and the flame. Ayatullah Bahjat's reading of "I found You worthy", which offers no reason at all. Two joys, one condition. The narration of the faster's joy at iftar and at meeting God, and what overeating costs. Arriving bankrupt. The Ramadhan supplication in which the servant brings no deeds to the door — the emptiness itself is the qualification. ### [Session 6 — The Return — How to Carry the Fire](https://www.truthpromoters.com/events/the-return-how-to-carry-the-fire) *21 March 2026* The scaffolding comes down on Eid morning, and the tradition wants to know if anything is still standing without it. A single word from the Qur'an frames the session: sibghatullah, "the dye of God", from a verse asking who dyes better than He does. Paint sits on a surface and can be scratched off; dye enters the weave and cannot be separated from the thread. Imam Khomeini, in Adab as-Salat, makes that dyeing the goal of the spiritual path — not the soul alone, but "the kingdom of the body", which is why a physical act like fasting was the door the month used to reach you. Whether the colour holds is a matter of orientation, not feeling. Ayatullah Bahjat taught that for someone genuinely sincere, "the walls and doors will become their teacher" — an ordinary Tuesday speaking as clearly as the special night once did. And Imam Ali, peace be upon him, reframes the festival itself: "It is only an Eid for the one whose fasting God has accepted… every day in which God is not disobeyed is an Eid." If the discipline that held the month together is gone by morning, what proof is left that any of it happened? What the evening covers The dye, not the paint. The Qur'anic word sibghatullah, and why Imam Khomeini insists the change must reach the body, not only the soul. A test for the morning after. Ayatullah Bahjat's teaching that sincerity turns the walls and doors themselves into teachers. Prayer before sermon. Why the Eid prayer's structure reverses Friday's, and what that reversal says about what the month already taught. Every day an Eid. Imam Ali's redefinition of the festival as a state available on any ordinary day the connection holds. --- _Read this event on the web: https://www.truthpromoters.com/events/the-joy-of-fasting_