Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘In a world where eating has become solitary and rushed, Ramadan restores something quietly radical: shared time. Iftar is not simply the moment hunger ends but the moment waiting becomes collective. People pause together, watch the same light fade over the horizon, hear the same call to prayer and reach for food at the same time. There is no personalised schedule, no eating on the run. This age-old ritual insists that nourishment is not only physical but spiritual and social, that being fed is being seen.

Modern life runs on customisation. Playlists are curated, news feeds tailored, working hours flexible. Even within households, dinner can be fragmented with one-person reheating leftovers at six, another ordering delivery at nine. Technology has expanded autonomy over time but paradoxically this has quietly eroded simultaneity. We are free, yet we are often alone.

Ramadan disrupts this drift. Fasting is private; no one can fully see another person’s hunger. But the breaking of the fast is shared. The discipline of waiting until sunset imposes a common boundary on the day. Across cities and villages, across continents and time zones, hundreds of millions orient themselves toward the same horizon. The sun, indifferent to productivity metrics, sets when it sets.’ (from the Guardian)

In my time at the BBC in the nineties, I worked with Muslims from across the globe. To fast in the summer in England, when the sun rises before 5am and sets after 9pm is a different proposition to dealing with the more evenly lengthed days closer to the equator. I remember saying to a journalist from Palestine that working the overnight shifts must make fasting a little easier to deal with. Yes, he replied, but I still get up five times during the day to pray.