I have described some of the factors which have effect upon...

I have described some of the factors which have effect upon the climates and seasons of a particular land. These factors have made the world a museum in which every conceivable kind of climate can be found in one or another corner at every given moment of the year. Thus, it is just impossible to select a time of the year which can be equally suitable and acceptable to the whole world, for such rules as fasting and pilgrimage.

Had Islam accepted solar calendar for such religious functions it would have done a great injustice to a greater part of the world. What would have been suitable, for instance, to India, could have been most inconvenient for Africa and/or America. So, Allah selected a lunar calendar. about ten days than the solar calendar, cycle becomes complete in about 33 years.

As this system is shorter by the seasons rotate in it, and the Thus a man of about 48 years of age, anywhere in the world, experiences every facility-and every hardship which the climate of his land can offer during Ramadhan. Thus, nobody is favoured; and nobody is discriminated against. Likewise, in pilgrimage: If a certain period of solar year would have been fixed, majority of the Muslims would have found themselves unable to go to Mecca.

A farmer, in whose region it would have been cultivating or harvesting time, could never go to Hajj. Neither could a civil servant whose holidays did not coincide with the pilgrimage period. But, in a lunar system, the farmer can wait until the rotation of the seasons brings the Hajj in his off-season; and the civil servant can wait until it falls in his holiday time.

It is just one example of what I had said earlier — Islam is a compact unit in which every part has the utmost significance for other parts. Pilgrimage, fast, lunar calendar, universality of Islam, equality of its followers in every respect in the eyes of God— these things may seem unrelated to each other to a layman. But, in fact, they are closely knit together and none of them can be neglected or torn without destroying the whole fabric.

During Ramadhan, Muslims abstain from eating and drinking, sexual relations and such things. A Shia Ithna-Asheri has to abstain, in addition, from putting his head in water and from speaking a lie, however immaterial, about God, prophets, Imams and Bibi Fatima, the daughter of the Holy Prophet. But it is only the external part of the fast. The soul and spirit of fast is something deeper.