The truth is that this is the reality of [Paradisal] food...

The truth is that this is the reality of [Paradisal] food, which does not break the fast…’[^7] Al-Isfahāni later continues[^8] saying: ولا تظنن أنّ تعبيرات هذا العبد هي من قبيل خيالات الشعراء وأوهامهم، أو من شطحيات غلاة المتصوفة، فحاشى أن أتجاوز لسان الكتاب والسنة، أو اتخطى في معتقدي غير ما جاء به الله والنبي وأمر به، وإنما المقصود هو قول الله نفسه في سورة "هل أتى" حيث يقول سبحانه: وَسَقٌهُمْ رَبُّهُمْ شَرَابــاً طَهُوراً “Do not think that the expressions of this servant resembles the imaginations of the poets and their vain ideas or the theopathetic utterances ( shatahiyyāt ) of the extremist so-called sūfīs ( mutasawwifah ).

I dare not transcend the bounds of the speech of the Book of God and the Sunnah, or adopt a course in my belief that is other than what Allāh and His Messenger brought and ordered [us to follow]. What I only mean here is the word of Allāh in chapter ‘ Hal Atā ’ where Allāh says: وَسَقَاهُمْ رَبُّهُمْ شَرَابًا طَهُورًا “…and their Lord made them drink a pure drink. ”[^9] Therefore despite the apparent hardship of fasting, ‘the ease that it accompanies’ is inexpressible.

Those endowed with deep insight also term hunger as the ‘the clouds from which rains of wisdom heavily fall’. In his poetic masterpiece of Islamic laws & their secrets called Nibrās al-Hudā , Mullā Hādī Sabzawāri says: وَالْجُوْعُ لِلْحِكْمَةِ مُزْنٌ مَاطِرٌ. “And hunger is a rainy cloud of wisdom.”[^10] [^1]: Holy Qur’ān, 2:185 . [^2]: Holy Qur’ān, 94:5-6. [^3]: Holy Qur’ān, 50:22. [^4]: Rawdat al-Wā‘izīn, vol. 2, pg. 421. [^5]: Mishkāt al-Anwār, pg. 170.