Wednesday, October 29, 2003

Fasting or 'Puasa'. As I have mentioned, one of the activities during this month is the tarawih prayer, an optional prayer at the mosque after the Isyak prayer. Actually tarawih is a 'senang senang' prayer, in our present language it is a sort of a recreation during the fasting, where Moslem would meet each other after breaking the fast and pray together, in most mosque the prayer would be twenty rekaat or time, but it is up to the individual to do the number of rekaat, It is said that the prophet Mohammad did only eight rekaat, so in some cases people would start to leave the congregation after the eight rekaat and the rest that remain would continue to pray as long as they like or until they finished the twenty rekaat. It is supposed to be a relaxing prayer, so most of the time people would take easy in performing this prayer in the mosque, moreover it is an optional prayer. Usually during the fasting month the mosque would be crowded to capacity during the first week and eventually as the fasting week progresses, less and less people would do their tarawih at the mosque but instead would continue to pray in the privacy of one's own house. Well that is the way of Islam...no one is force to do this or that... for it is only an optional prayer...remember they is no compulsion in Islam.....Another aspect of fasting is that one have to wake up early in the morning, just before the morning prayer to eat the last meal of the night, Moslem are encourage to eat at this early morning supper so that they may fast with enough energy to take them all the way until the breaking of the fast in the evening....as can be seen those that follow this simple rules of fasting would find that fasting is not that difficult at all but as I have said earlier fasting is actually more of the states of the mind,and once you are set to fast, then it would be just easy.......

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