Fasting and Pop Culture

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Ismatillah A. Nu’ad*

Pop culture not only related to fashion, lifestyle, or entertainment. Because it is more to global and universal phenomenon, all Moslems are being called to fast for the whole Ramadan, and the popular culture’s energy’s can be felt clearly by all Moslem.

Theoretically, according to Dominic Strianati, a popular culture is a practical culture which actualized by massive society. The factor which brings the popular culture prominent is the advancement of information of communication. Because of the same factor globalization took part to the world society. (Strianati, An Introduction to the theories of Popular Culture, 2003)

Ramadan as pop culture

Nowadays, if we go to the mall to break our fast around 17.30 we can not get a place in a restaurant especially minutes before the time to break the fast, this is because the place can get very crowded at those times. The consequence is that we can only eat after mahgrib and before isya because it is at that time that the restaurant can be less crowed. That is the euphoria of the Moslem in Ramadan from time to time. Malls will be greatly benefited because of the Moslems are spending money there. Seeing the phenomenon, Moslem seems to be unaffected by the economic crisis which has devastated some of the society so they now life in poverty.

It is also for certain that in the coming week or two of Lebaran the shopping center will be packed with visitors who want to spend their money for the Festive such as buying clothes, cookies, and other stuff. In short, every Ramadan festive Moslem became consumerist and seems to be ignoring the substance of the fasting itself. Popular culture has deeply rooted the Moslem and made them unaware of the condition of other Moslem who might still struggle in poverty.

Besides that, another phenomenon which might also be felt and experienced by Moslem is that right after two or three days of the fasting, short message services have been flooding through our mobiles. The message is not far from request of forgiveness because of the whole month fasting. The greeting of ‘congratulation of Ramadan 1429 H Ramadan Fasting’ or a poetic line which considered ‘soothing’ which have the same message of forgiveness. In other word short message has became a popular culture among Moslem which has to be done.

In a glace, the culture of forgiving is not wrong. The problem occurs when it became a superficial culture because it is becoming the popular culture and the substance of forgiveness itself forgotten and the religious service is being ignored. The fact is, the substance is more important than the formal greeting via short message. It also can be made for certain that the same message will be flooding in Lebaran.

Seeing the popular culture which already embraced by the Moslem a question appear, will that amount of energy spent by the Moslem for those superficial things? Does Ramadan have no other social function? Isn’t Ramadan a tme to reflect ourselves? The Month of forgiveness, the time to purify ourselves after making sins. It is time for Moslem to chance, from fasting as pop culture to fasting as a social and humanity function.

Being in time

So what is the goal of fasting other than popular culture? Aren’t we supposed to understand the objective of fasting which we do in Ramadan? Nurcholish Madjid (1998) translates pious as the objective of fasting, the conscience to make God to be present in life (omnipresent). Or universally, how the religious message translated in human reality so that religion became more than just symbol and scattered normative textual.

In fasting, the existence of humanity is trained and revived. It opens the horizon of experience that human not only interact vertically but the most important is horizontally. Vertically means that human is bound by religiosity contract to God through the order to fast. God and human interact as a whole, in one side God giving his retribution directly and in other side human is once again awaken that his existence and action can not be release from God’s control. Horizontally, human is made to realize that life in this world is not for human alone. Fasting can grow the conscience form private life to public life. A rich man can feel how is it to be a pauper who lacks food; we are also trained to give more to the poor and other horizontal experiences.

Following the term by Heideggerian, fasting can make human to realize their ‘existence’ in the world (being in time). For eleven month, people have spent their time with their family, seeking entertainment, gossiping with friends or acquaintances, and even if we perform our religious services it became nothing more than a routine and done as a tradition. We became ignorant to others, became individualist and used to be settled in convenience and luxury, getting used to satiation while our ‘neighbors’ are still suffer from hunger, poverty, and lack of education. At this time then fasting appears in the middle of human’s ‘inexistence’ to ‘existence’.
The ‘existence’ to care for others, putting public needs before private need, and to minimize and stop all action which can jeopardize public importance (maslahah am), such as corruption, collations, and exploitation.

In Heideggerian framework, the process of ‘existence’ was first created accidentally. For example when we found an accident or a crime on the street, we instantly have our human desire which called us to care and help, either directly or just in our mind. In this conscious state is where our ‘existence’ as human as categorized by Heidegger as being in time (Heidegger, The Readers, 2003).

Either realized or not, fasting brought us to human ‘existence’ to no longer became ‘shadow’ (silhouette), but to be a human who fully realize our humanity. Because when we were ‘shadows’ we are not the creature that God made as the perfect creature among other of God’s creation. Fasting gives all of us the chance to realize our human existence. Wallahualam.

Ismatillah A. Nu’ad, research staff in Kantata Research Indonesia, author of “Fundamentalisme progresif: era baru dunia islam”