148 No god but God
ordered his followers to fast with the Jews in commemoration of their
flight from Egypt. Only later was the fast changed to Ramadan, the
month in which Muslims believe the Quran was first revealed to
Muhammad.
For the twenty-eight days of Ramadan, no one may eat, drink, or
have sexual intercourse between sunup and sundown. Again, the chief
purpose behind the ritual fast is to bind the community as one. It is a
reminder of the suffering and poverty of those among them who go
without food throughout the year. For this reason, Muslims who are
not obliged to fast—the old and the sick, the pregnant and nursing,
travelers, and those who perform heavy manual labor—are instead
required by the Quran to feed the hungry (2:184). And while an entire
month of fasting may sound like a grim experience, Ramadan is in
actuality a time for both spiritual introspection and festive celebra-
tion. Friends, families, entire neighborhoods spend the long nights of
the month breaking fast together, while the final night of Ramadan,
Eid al-Fitr, is the most widely celebrated holiday in the whole of the
Islamic world.
The fourth, and perhaps the most famous, Pillar is the annual Hajj
pilgrimage to Mecca. All Muslims must, if possible, journey to Mecca
at least once in their lives to take part in the sacred rites of the Ka‘ba.
Technically, the rites at the Ka‘ba can be performed anytime in what is
known as the “lesser pilgrimage,” or umra. However, the Hajj itself
takes place only during the last month of the lunar year, when the
sacred city swells to accommodate the crowds of pilgrims like a
“mother’s uterus that miraculously makes room for its child,” to quote
the famed twelfth-century Spanish scholar and poet Ibn Jubayr.
Like their pagan counterparts, Muslim pilgrims travel to Mecca to
experience the transformative effects of the Ka‘ba. But unlike the
pagan sanctuary, the Muslim Ka‘ba is not a repository of the gods.
Rather, it is a symbol for the living presence of the one and only God.
The Ka‘ba, it must be understood, has no architectural significance. It
is a cube—the simplest form a building can take—veiled in black
(which is no color) and rimmed with the word of God. It is not a tem-
ple in the traditional sense. It no longer has any intrinsic sanctity; it
has been torn down and rebuilt a number of times. Though dubbed
“the House of God,” the Ka‘ba houses nothing, save for a few Qurans