The Doing “Good” Of Ramadan Fasting

M. Bakri Musa

 

June 7, 2026

Excerpted and modified from my Qur’an, Hadith And Hikayat:  Exercises In Critical Thinking (2021)

 

Consider the Qur’anic imperative to “enjoin good and forbid evil” (amar ma'ruf nahi munkar) as it relates to our month-long ritual of fasting during Ramadan. That grueling exercise would be entirely for naught if we do not use the time to reflect, ponder, and share our blessings with those less privileged—not just during the holy month, but consistently throughout the year. Only then does the true spiritual reward (pahala) would accrue. Absent that deeper intellectual and moral engagement, fasting is reduced to a mere empty ritual, a superficial display of piety and burdened by the associated discomfort of hunger and thirst.

 

That stark reality was brought home to me by my wife during one Ramadan early in my medical career. As a surgeon in private practice, I had to take my fair share of Emergency Room (ER) calls at our local hospital. In California—indeed, across the United States—the law mandates that in an emergency, hospitals are legally and morally obligated to treat all patients regardless of their ability to pay. In short, no preliminary “wallet biopsy.” Lawyers, too, have similar pro bono obligations woven into the fabric of their profession. Perversely, Malaysia, a self-professed Islamic state so fond of outward religious displays of religiousity, has no such statutory requirements to protect its poorest and less fortunate citizens.

One particular Ramadan early in my career, I was summoned to the ER in the dead of night to attend to a patient with an abdominal stab wound. From the brief history relayed over the phone, I knew that this would be, as we clinicians put it with unconcealed euphemism, a case of “uncompensated care.” Worse, in the litigious American environment, you would be lucky not to be sued by the very person you saved for free.

Being abruptly jolted from your deep sleep is bad enough. Being interrupted after you have been fasting all day has a unique and predictable way of putting you in a very foul mood. The added knowledge that the upcoming hours of intense surgical labor would be a “freebie” only aggravated my resentment. I must have created quite a ruckus as I begrudgingly get dressed, and in my petulance, I woke up my wife.

She knew exactly what was eating at me. Instead of scolding me for the disruption, she rose from bed and hugged me.

“Bakri, this is Ramadan,” she said softly, soothing my frayed nerves. “It is a blessed month. A time to be generous—not just with our money, but with ourselves, our time, and our talent. Consider this surgery your zakat!”

Those soothing words calmed me instantly. It was a swift, much-needed correction to my perspective, reminding me precisely why I chose the healing arts in the first place. This was Allah presenting an opportunity for me to demonstrate real gratitude for the immense blessings He had showered upon my family. It was only right that I reciprocate. That simple shift in mindset transformed the hospital call from an irritating operational burden into a test of character—a profound reminder of how privileged we truly were.

From then on, I looked upon my ER obligations through a completely different lens. Yes, the demands of the profession meant I missed more than a few significant events in my children’s lives; I was late or absent for birthdays, school plays, and family dinners. Nonetheless, that revelation from my wife decades ago helped me put things in their proper hierarchy of importance. The external reality remained exactly the same—the broken sleep, the uncompensated labor sometimes—but my internal perception of it had been radically altered.

It was perhaps divine irony that over forty years later, the very last case I performed before retiring from active surgical practice in early 2020 was an indigent patient, also from the ER. As fate would have it, he happened to be a member of our local congregation—not that his identity would have changed my commitment to his care. He was a gentle soul who had frequently donated his own work and time to maintain our local musalla. I felt profoundly blessed that Allah allowed me to hang up my scalpel on such a high, meaningful note.

By contrast, a colleague of mine took a far different approach to the burden of ER calls. He became so bitter and incensed by the ever-increasing load of “uncompensated care” that his frustrations began to poison his clinical judgment and erode his bedside manner. That chronic cynicism eventually resulted in his being sued for malpractice multiple times. His grievances were literally eating him from the inside out. Ultimately, broken and disillusioned, he abandoned medicine altogether.

Being spared the tragic fate of my colleague would have been reward enough. To think that while saving lives I was also fulfilling my zakat and truly “enjoining good” remains a source of immense comfort. I owe that enduring clarity of vision to my wife, who quietly reminded me during that dark Ramadan night, of the true meaning of charity, duty, and faith.

Next:  Inspirations from Surah Al Fatihah