Muslims, mostly Shia, also fast on Tuesdays and
Thursdays throughout the year, but especially
during the months of Shaaban and Rajab.
In addition to fulfilling a religious require-
ment, fasting is associated with a variety of other
benefits. For some, it presents an opportunity to
focus on one’s spiritual life. Indeed, many Sufis are
known to include extended fasts in their religious
practice. For others, the feelings of hunger are an
important reminder of the plight of less fortunate
members of the community. For still others, fast-
ing may be performed as an act of expiation for a
broken promise. Finally, fasting is seen as provid-
ing beneficial health effects.
See also asceticism; dietary laWs; Feasting;
Food and drink.
Michelle ZimneyFurther reading: Hammudah Abdalati, Islam in Focus
(Indianapolis: Islamic Trust Publications, 1996); Marjo
Buitelaar, Fasting and Feasting in Morocco: Women’s Par-
ticipation in Ramadan (Oxford: Berg, 1993).
fate
Fate is a power or force that is thought to deter-
mine in advance what happens in the world, par-
ticularly to human beings. It is opposed to pure
accident or chance and is often equated with the
idea of fortune or destiny in this world and in the
aFterliFe. Fatalism is a worldview that upholds
the belief that all events are predetermined and
that it is useless for anyone to try to change them.
In ancient Mesopotamia, fate was believed to be in
the hands of the gods, whom human beings were
created to serve. In ancient Greece, it was personi-
fied in the form of three women or was said to be
something controlled by the god Zeus. Christian
thinkers reinterpreted ancient beliefs about fate
by associating it with Divine Providence, which
they qualified by also asserting a human capac-
ity for choosing between good and evil. Christian
theology has struggled, therefore, with reconciling
belief in God’s omnipotence with human free will.
Although Islam is often represented as a
fatalistic religion, two different trends of thought
developed within the Muslim community in
regard to the issue of God’s predetermination of
events and human freedom. The competing Mus-
lim theological discussions of this topic all quote
quranic verses to support the positions they have
taken. Speaking of God’s incomparable majesty
and power, the qUran states, “God guides to
truth whom he wills and leads astray whom he
wills” (Q 14:4), and “When he decrees a thing,
he says to it ‘Be’ and it is” (for example, Q 2:117).
Verses such as these have been used by those
who argued that God determines all that hap-
pens to people, whether good or evil. This view
is also reflected in the popular Arabic expression,
“In sha Allah” (If God wills it so), which people
often say when planning a future activity. In a
similar vein, the Quran declares, “Nothing will
happen to us except what God has written for us”
(Q 9:51), implying that human destiny has been
preordained in a divine book or tablet. Moreover,
the Quran states that all created things have been
assigned a fixed term of existence (ajal). Even a
person’s death was thought to be predetermined
(see Q 6:2, 39:42, 40:68). God’s power to deter-
mine everything that happens became a formal
aspect of Sunni theology, especially in the ashari
school, and it had the approval of early Muslim
rulers, who sought to protect their own power by
arguing that it was God-given, despite their own
moral failures as Muslims.
Nonfatalist advocates of free will sought to
give human beings more responsibility in decid-
ing how to conduct their lives and shape their
own destinies. They pointed to the many verses
in the Quran that spoke of the Final Judgment
and maintained that God’s judgment would be
just only if humans were righteous or sinful by
choice rather than by fate. According to one such
verse, “Truth is from your Lord, so whoever wills,
let him believe, and whoever wills, let him dis-
believe. Indeed, we have prepared a Fire for the
disbelievers... and for those who believe and doK 228 fate