 Peace and blessings of God be upon all of you. Thank you for having us here and hosting this far. It's an honor to be here. I'm actually not going to take too much of your time. I've noticed that usually when there's a Muslim speaker people have a lot of questions. Maybe I'll actually open it up for some Q&A in a minute or so. You can ask me whatever you want about Islam. It doesn't have to be about fasting. But fasting is one of the pillars of Islam. So there's the same as hadith. Hadith is a saying of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. And there's different grades of these hadith. Some are strong, some are weak, some are fabricated. This particular hadith tends to be strong. He said, Islam is built on five. By five he meant the pillars. So the first pillar is called the Shahada in Arabic. It means witnessing. So witnessing that there's only one God. And Muslims call this God Allah. And Allah is not a foreign God. According to the Qur'an, Allah is the God of Abraham. Allah is the God of Moses. Allah is the God of Jesus. And these prophets are mentioned in the text of the Qur'an itself. So Allah is not some Arab God or the God of the Middle Easterners or something like that. He's the God of Abraham. So Shahada is to witness that he is the only one God. When I say he is the only one God, that's again not to say that God is masculine or male. But every word in Arabic is assigned a gender, right, the linguist. So sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it's not, sometimes it's a natural gender. Sometimes the linguist will assign what's known as a lexical gender to the word. So for example the word for son, S-U-N in Arabic, it's shams. But the linguist way back in the day decided that the son is feminine and the moon is masculine. Nobody really knows why that is. Maybe there's someone here that's studying the history or the mythology of Arabic words. But the word Allah in Arabic is masculine lexically. So we refer to him as him. That there's no God but him and that the Prophet Muhammad is real on him. The Muslims believed to be the last in a long line of prophets starting from Adam, including names like, like we said Abraham, even Noah, even David and Solomon are seen as prophets. Elijah. And there's a minority opinion that there are several female prophets including the wife of Pharaoh named Asya whose story is not told as far as I know in Jewish sources as well as Sarah and Hagar and Mary, the mother of Jesus who's mentioned in the Quran as well. So the shahada is similar to maybe the shama in its abortions. This is sort of the essence of Islamic confession. And then the second pillar is known as salam, which believe it or not has an etymology, a common etymology with tafidla, Hebrew, which means prayer. So Muslims, well they should at least pray five times a day at different times, right? And these prayers take a few minutes when somebody converts to Islam. It's kind of burdensome. I have to pray again, I just prayed three hours ago. But then as you age and get wiser, these things become much easier. So they take a few minutes, every few hours. And then there's something called zakah, which is also known as sadaqah or swadakah in Hebrew, it's related to sadid, which has a root meaning of to purify something. So zakah or sadaqah is a poor Jew. Most things, if there's excess wealth, this is only for people that can't afford that. Two and a half percent of their excess wealth will go to the less fortunate or the poor. And then we have the fourth pillar, which is called hajj, or hajj in Hebrew. Or if you're living in Egypt, it's also called hajj, because the jim and the letter jim in Arabic, Egyptian dialect is pronounced like an email. So they'll say like Michael Gordon, instead of Michael Jordan. So again, this is for Muslims that can afford to do so, they'll make a pilgrimage to Mecca. Once a year is the obligation, if you can afford to do so. And then there's something called the prumarach, which is the lesser pilgrimage. And then finally, the fifth pillar is called som, which is exactly the same word in Hebrew, som and fasting, also known as siyan in the Quran. The Quran says, The Quran says to the Muslims at large that fasting is prescribed upon you, just as it was prescribed upon those before you. And the exigents here clarify and say, before you means Ahmet Kitab, the people of the Bible, the people of the book, Jews and Christians. And then la'allakum tattaqun, so that the purpose of fasting is given. So there's an axiom amongst the scholars of Islam that the merit of something is known by its objective. So the objective of fasting, according to the Quran, is la'allakum tattaqun, in order for you to be people of God consciousness. The word in Arabic is taqwa, which is very, very difficult to translate. Sometimes it's translated as fear of God, in order for you to fear God, which is the beginning of all wisdom, according to the Quran. Sometimes it's translated as in order for you to re-hell evil, to guard against evil. In pre-Islamic times, the word taqwa actually meant a shield, something to block the blow of a sword. So probably the best translation is to be conscious of God. So when Muslims are fasting, when anyone's fasting, in theory, there should be a sort of focus on the inward, right? You're not eating, you're not drinking, there's no marital relations in the daytime, according to Muslims fast, in order to, if you want to focus on God completely. And how does one focus on God? I remember in God, and by guarding one's limbs, or is this something that a Muslim is supposed to be doing all throughout the year, by the way? So Ramadan is really more like a training program to set the stage for the rest of the year. That is one of the ways through the course of the year. It shouldn't, but it tends to. And then Ramadan, again, you enter into this training program. We're not, we're not looking at things that are forbidden. So it's not just a fast of the stomach, right? There's a hadith of the prophet where he said, there are several people, it's a rhetorical question, how many fasters are there and get nothing from their fast, except hunger and thirst, meaning that they're missing the point of the fast. The point of the fast is to really master the self, to master the self. There's a hadith of the prophet, and there is a weakness of this hadith, but generally the scholars of Islam will quote it, because they would say, they would argue that the meaning of the hadith is true, even though it's a chain of transmission, may have some weakness. Anyway, it's reported that the prophet said, man arafah nafsah, arafah rafa. The translation is, whoever knows himself knows his Lord. So the word in Arabic here, arafah, or ma'rifah, really means to recognize, recognize himself, whoever recognizes himself will recognize his Lord. So one of the meanings here, according to the scholars of this hadith, is that if you recognize your origin as God's creation, as God's beloved creation, you will come to know that God is the beloved. Another shade of meaning of this tradition is that if you master yourself, then you'll come to know God. If you can guard your eyes, guard your ears, if you can guard your tongue from lying and from speaking ill of people behind their backs, from cursing, from even raising your voice. So we have descriptions of the prophet Muhammad, as far as his disposition goes. And all of the hadiths say that the prophet did not even raise his voice, that he was an easygoing personality, that he said, the best of you are those who are best to their family members. He said that he is not from us who doesn't honor the elderly and have mercy on our young. He said, none of you will enter paradise until you truly believe, and none of you will truly believe until you love one another. And then he said, shall I tell you of something that will increase your love? And they said, yes. And he said, afshus salamu alaykum, spread peace amongst yourself. So this is the main sort of focus or point of the fast, is to really transcend the physical and also to empathize, right, with those who are less fortunate, right, to experience something of what they're experiencing for the sake of increasing our concern for them. Because the more empathy one has, the more compassionate one has. And the more compassionate one has, the more God-like, as it were, or more angelic they are. Jesus is actually quoted in the Qur'an as saying, which is obviously in Arabic. But he said, be lordly, be like God, be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect in the language of Matthew. What does it mean to be like God? It means to appropriate, if you will, to find qualities at a human level. None of us can be God, despite what some world leaders think. Or perceive themselves. We're not going to name draw. But to be divine, the lower case D, is to assimilate qualities of God, such as mercy and compassion, right. And this is accomplished through these pillars of Islam, through prayer, through charity, through pilgrimage, and especially through fasting. The prophet said in the hadith, quoting God, he said, all of the actions of the sons and daughters of Adam are for him, except fasting. For indeed, that is mine. And the exegents, they say, what this means is, no one knows that you're fasting. When you pray, people can see you pray. When you go to pilgrimage, people can see you in your garb and you're making your circummanulations and so on and so forth. When you're giving charity, people can see that. When you're fasting, no one knows except God. So the prophet said, God says, fasting is for me, and I will reward them for that. Up to add infinity. So fasting has a very honored place amongst the practices of the Muslim. That's all I wanted to say. If there's time for a few questions, I can't. I'll just go to the camera. What do you think? Sure. That's all. Thank you.