Discovering The Essence of Ramadan In Dar ul Kufr

 Discovering The Essence Of Ramadan In Dar ul Kufr

M. Bakri Musa

Feb 22, 2026

Excerpt from my Quran, Hadith , and Hikayat will resume next week

It may be counterintuitive or even paradoxical but living in Muslim-minority secular West (Dar ul Kufr) I learned much on the essence and meaning of Ramadan.  

My first experience was as a freshman in Edmonton, Canada, in January 1964. With the short winter days fasting was not a challenge. Then the thought occurred: What about summer? I posed that question to my father back in Malaysia. Confounded, he sought the advice of our village Imam.

“Ramadan,” our Imam advised my father, “is not a torture test.” The Qur’an does not intend for hardship and has indeed provided for many sensible exemptions. If fasting in summer is too trying in Canada, then follow Saudi or Malaysia time. 

Our Imam was a simple villager. He was Imam because we the flock called him so. They were impressed with his piety during the desperate years of the Japanese Occupation. Trying times are a test not an excuse, he counselled his flock. 

Today in Malaysia, like many Muslim countries, Imams are appointed by and part of the massive state bureaucracy. If caught not fasting, a Muslim would be fined and publicly humiliated by being paraded around town in a hearse. The government machinery too during Ramadan is sluggish, like France in August. 

Later as a surgeon in an Oregon timber town, I was invited by the plant manager to tour his massive facility so I could better appreciate the kinds of injuries his workers would sustain. I saw huge logs being shunted back and forth against massive circular saws of varying sizes to be sliced into planks of assorted shapes and dimensions. The high-pitched sounds would pierce the thickest skull. We had to wear thick, tight ear muffs as well as steel boots and helmets while communicating only through precise hand signals. The red emergency switch buttons were prominently placed at frequent intervals.

After all that harsh pushing, cutting, and flipping the final products were then sorted and transferred into a quiet, cool, and temperature-controlled room in a separate building to be “cured” for a few days. Only then would they be ready for marketing where again they would be subjected to the inevitable stresses of the factory and building sites. Sans the curing the pieces would become brittle and break easily, the manager told me. Not the best way to assure repeat customers for your brand!

We too go through many inevitable bumps and stresses in our daily lives. We also need to be “cured” or have our own “time out.” That is Ramadan to me. The fasting-induced ketosis only deepens the spiritual dimension beyond the usual timeout I enjoy as with a vacation. 

A few years later in Silicon Valley I was called late in the night to the Emergency Room (ER) for a patient with a gunshot wound. Being awakened from a deep sleep, more so after a day of fasting, has a way of putting one in a foul mood, more so when you expect the case to be what we private practitioners euphemistically referred to as “uncompensated case.” I must have made quite a raucous, enough to wake up my dear wife. Sensing my frustration, she got up to remind me that this was Ramadan, a time to be charitable, not just in our deeds but also thoughts. That was the calming I needed.

Charity is central in Islam. Ramadan’s zakat fitra (tithe) is mandatory upon every Muslim save the disabled; they are the recipients. More important but often ignored is the charity of spirit. I had on many occasions broken my fast so I could focus my energy on my patient. That is my obligation; my zakat.

In Dar Al Kufr (Muslim-minority) America, hospital ERs have to treat all patients, sans preliminary wallet biopsy, and physicians have to take their share of covering the ER. Until recently that was pro bono. In Darul Islam Malaysia a few years back during one Ramadan a young man died in an ambulance enroute to a government hospital after being turned away from a private one. His parents could not bring the deposit funds in time.

In the Muslim world (Dar ul Islam) the preoccupation in Ramadan is with nighttime gluttony, and the associated accounting minutiae of religious brownie points. To wit, worshipping on the 27^th night of Ramadan exceeds that of a thousand months! 

Ramadan is that much more meaningful to me precisely because it is just another month to the greater society. The anticipated heightened spirituality together with my much-welcomed trimmer waist aside, I, like millions of Muslims worldwide, welcome Ramadan.