“Allah says: ‘Fasting is prescribed for you, as it was prescribed for those who came before you.’ Why? ‘La‘allakum tattaqun’ – ‘that you might learn taqwa.’ Fasting has a zahir and a batin, an outward and an inward. And neither is of any use without the other. As a hadith says: ‘Many a fasting persons gains nothing from his fast, apart from hunger and thirst.’ In other words, without a batin fast, an inward fast, the fast is only formally, mechanically correct. It is like a body without a spirit, which is nothing more than a corpse. And this is not how Allah wants us to be when we worship Him.”
Shaykh Abdal-Hakim Murad
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