To Fast or Not to Fast?

Ramadan might start tomorrow if the moon is visible tonight. Should I fast or not? Zahir asked me today after my marathon with the bureaucracy whether I was planning on fasting. I hadn't really considered it... after all I'm not Muslim. I told him maybe, but I like food. He and Um Zahir laughed at this, but said I should think about fasting.

Lindsey is planning to fast. Initially, for solidarity with her Muslim husband. When she told him, he got mad, and told her that she shouldn't fast for him, fasting should be only for God. She set off to the Bible and a translated Qur'an to find out whether she could theologically justify her fast. She's fasting, she decided, for God. It's the same God.

I feel as though I shouldn't fast, despite Jolianne's "Ramadan Diet" success (this was just a good side effect, not her aim in fasting last year). I am, after all, an atheist and fasting for God is therefore not a possibility. Would it be wrong of me to fake piety? Or worse, fast for the aesthetics, meaninglessly attaching corporal and temporal concerns to what is supposed to be a religious act?

I won't be eating or drinking in public, which is rude when everyone around you is fasting. But what will I say when the family invites me down for iftar (the meal to break fast), and asks me whether I fasted?

Also, it's really hot and I can't imagine making it from 8am (classes at 9) to sundown without water. And a month is a long-ass time.