Ramadan and Our Test of Sensitivity

RAMADAN always arrives with the same mission: a pause from the hustle and bustle of life, an opportunity to recalibrate the spirit, and a call to purify the relationship between humans with God and with one another. Yet, social experience shows that growth in piety is not always followed by growth in sensitivity to the suffering taking place around us.

Fasting forms a distinctive experience of consciousness. The body feels limits, attention becomes more perceptive, and the reality of human needs appears more tangible in daily life. The experience of hunger in fasting opens attention to the fact that hunger is part of the everyday life of millions of people.

The experience of self-restraint brings discipline to consumer impulses and reveals how the social ego operates at a collective level through the economic system, public policy, and social structures.

SPIRITUALITY AND INEQUALITY

Ramadan this year unfolds within social dynamics relatively familiar to Indonesian society. As the month of fasting approaches, consumption patterns rise, the prices of several staple foods tend to adjust, and household expenditures increase due to seasonal needs, from preparations for worship to social family traditions.

For some groups with fixed incomes, these changes can be managed as an annual rhythm. But for workers with unstable incomes, seasonal adjustments often require reordering daily expenditure priorities.

In such a situation, the Ramadan experience is formed through spiritual preparedness as well as the household’s economic ability to adjust to the annual social cycle.

In the digital space, solidarity appears in abundance in the form of slogans, campaigns, and symbolic expressions. Yet, in the physical realm, not everyone has the luxury to greet Ramadan with the same calm. Some endure hunger as worship, but there are those who endure hunger as structural coercion.

This is where Ramadan becomes a mirror that reveals personal piety alongside the quality of social justice we build together.

In the repertoire of classical Islamic thought, fasting has never been understood merely as an ascetic practice of the individual. Imam al-Ghazali (d. 1111 AH) asserts that deliberate hunger should cultivate awareness of unavoidable hunger. Fasting is education in social empathy, and empathy, if truly working, always demands a change in the way we live together.

The fundamental question that frequently arises is whether the Ramadan experience truly broadens social solidarity, or merely strengthens ritualistic symbolism without structural transformation?

Social vulnerability in Indonesia is not simply an individual phenomenon. It is a product of structure. Casual workers without guarantees, urban families with fragile economic resilience, coastal communities affected by climate change, and marginal groups living in chronic uncertainty are part of our social architecture.

Rapid urbanisation creates concentrations of vulnerability anew. The digital economy opens opportunities as it widens job insecurity. Climate change presses on food systems. All of these are interwoven.

Economist Amartya Sen (1999) places development as the process of expanding human freedom to live with dignity. In that framework, inequality is understood as a condition that limits the space for life, choices, and the ability of individuals to live their lives with dignity.

Ramadan, within that framework, appears as both a spiritual moment and a process of forming social consciousness that directs attention to the structures that sustain vulnerability.

In a global context, the issue appears increasingly real. The climate crisis, geopolitical conflicts, and disruptions to the world economy show vulnerability as part of systemic dynamics. Economic interconnectedness increases and moral solidarity develops in different dynamics.

Fasting essentially teaches human interconnectedness. Yet the global system often reveals a disjunction of responsibility. Therefore, Ramadan challenges us to read reality not only as an economic fact but also as a moral and civilizational issue.

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Ramadan comes as a religious event with social consequences in the management of communal life. Stabilising food prices, protecting informal workers, access to health services, and the distribution of social aid are part of public governance that directly touches people’s lives. All of this concerns the dignity of humans who lead a spiritual life under unequal material conditions.

In the framework of maqashid al-syari‘ah, the objectives of Islamic law are to preserve life, intellect, property, and human dignity. A social structure that enables systemic poverty means failing to protect life. Extreme inequality destroys dignity. Economic insecurity weakens the ability of humans to use reason and potential optimally.

In other words, social injustice reflects economic as well as collective ethical concerns in communal life.

Providing temporary aid is a noble act. However, maqashid calls for structural protection. Solidarity is not enough to be charitable. It must be institutionalised in distribution systems, social protection, and an economic order that is just.

Hans Jonas (1979) describes it as the imperative of responsibility, i.e., a moral obligation to ensure that social actions and public policies safeguard the sustainability of human life. From that perspective, public policy is judged through technocratic efficiency and ethical responsibility to vulnerable groups.

Fazlur Rahman (1982) emphasises that Islam aims to form a moral society, not merely individuals who are pious. Social morality is tested in how a state manages welfare, in how markets shape the distribution of wealth.