“just as it was prescribed for those before you” – meaning: it was made obligatory for the nations that preceded you. This shows that fasting was known to earlier communities and in former revelations; it is not exclusive to the law of Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him).

The human soul may find fasting burdensome, for it curbs its impulses and bars it from its desires. Yet Allah, majestic and exalted, has declared that this is His longstanding practice with His creation and that it applies to every nation. Even in the pre-Islamic Age of Ignorance fasting was familiar; they used to fast on the Day of Ashura.

“So that you may become God-fearing.” This clause explains the wisdom behind fasting: it generates God-fearingness. By fasting a person voluntarily abandons his usual comforts, passions, and preferred foods in order to draw nearer to Allah, and that earns him piety. It also breaks the soul’s craving and its intensity, for Satan courses through the son of Adam like blood. Indulgence in desires strengthens Satan’s grip, whereas abstaining from them constricts the flow of blood and drives Satan away. Thus fasting produces God-fearingness, the fountainhead of all goodness.

Hence the benefit of fasting is that it brings about God-fearingness—fear of Allah, avoidance of His prohibitions, and restraint from unlawful desires—for when a person