The above, a Stuff web-site heading explaining Ramadan’s meaning; specifically no eating, no drinking (including water) or sex, between dawn and dusk. This was described as spiritual detoxification, although it sounds a damn sight more physical to me.
Having been in numerous Islamic countries during such occasions, I’ve witnessed the day-time detoxification well and truly compensated for after dusk, with a fair amount of jollity and re-toxification going on.
But that’s only one manifestation of it. There’s another, as probably most Muslims could recount, namely explosive bad tempers. Take this incident for example.
Once sitting with a girl-friend in the back of a Cairo taxi during Ramadan, we pulled up at traffic lights alongside a young fellow on a motor-scooter, with his girlfriend seated behind him.
For some reason our driver and the young bloke began exchanging abuse. Then the lights went green whereupon the scooterist shouted something plainly extremely offensive resulting in our driver going beserk and chasing him through the streets while raging away.
Just as we were closing in, the scooterist panicked, shot across the pavement and through the wide-open doors of a large store. And unbelievably we followed, scattering shoppers everywhere.
We got out and left them to it with the shop customers now all joining into the hullabaloo.
So much for detoxification.