Ramadan is more than just a holy month in the Islamic calendar. It is a climate, a season. It is a spectacular season of resistance, revival and existence.

It is a season of resistance against everything that distances us from God, from the truth. It is a season of the awareness of truth, a season of revival, purification, recovery, and “existence” by setting off on a journey to the truth.

Existence is, after all a journey, not the effort to dominate, own or be, but rather the effort and struggle to allow oneself to be molded by suffering, to transcend one’s being, to purify, to awaken; and to go beyond oneself through this awakening.

The coronavirus pandemic affected Ramadan, Hajj, as well as our Friday prayers. We cannot question God’s wisdom. Our duty is to comprehend it.

We are experiencing a first in history; it is a creepy and unnerving situation that the more one thinks the more they are led to rebel saying, “This is not right, it cannot go on this way!”

This is a tragedy: never before was such a long break taken from worship, never before were mosques shut down for so long and Friday prayers canceled. The Kaaba has been submerged into silence and circumambulation has stopped.

Of course, there is a global epidemic and we must take our precautions and act sensitively. The sole way to avoid getting infected by the virus are abiding by the principles of hygiene that Islam dictates. This concept of cleanliness and the application of all its principles throughout the world, as well its appreciation is pleasing.

Another pleasing event is the fact that Muslims worldwide are behaving responsibly to prevent the virus from spreading.

All these are positive developments. However, with respect to the forms of worship that are obligatory to be performed in congregation, such as the Friday prayer, formulas should be developed to ensure it be performed despite current events – even if with a limited number of people and, of course, taking care to implement protective measures.

Muslims all across the world, from Indonesia to Lebanon, did not suspend Friday prayers: everybody brought their own prayer mats, adhered to the rules, including social distancing, and continued to perform their Friday prayers.

I personally believe that while a decision has been made to open high-risk areas such as shopping malls, mosques being opened, even if just on Fridays, will lead to God’s mercy and compassion.

Ramadan is a season of awareness and resistance; it is a season of resistance during which humankind feels the truth, nature and its Creator’s existence directly through its own experiences and rejects idols.

Cognition and resistance are processes of humankind co-existing with religion. This coincides with the Mecca process. A human “character” that plunges into the course of becoming conscious of all beings and the truth is built during this process.

This process is the journey to adhering to divine principles, setting off on the journey with divine principles, and rejecting all idols.

Ramadan is, at the same time, a season of revival. The season of revival coincides with the Medina process. The consciousness that activated the Medina process is the Prophetic conscious.

Just as the Mecca process activated the body/existence, the Medina process activates the conscience.

Finally, Ramadan is a season of existence.

The season of “being” coincides with the civilization process: the consciousness that activated this process is a natural poem that is equipped with the divine consciousness and molded with prophetic consciousness. It is after this that humans, life becomes enraptured, exuberates, and transcends itself.

This is poetry; a magnificent word attained by the conscious that offers us the opportunity to reach the divine. A state of supra-conscious in which the word of the essence and the essence of the word is internalized.

During these bitter days, may God allow us to be of those who grasp the civilization aspect of Ramadan, which is the sole season during which we experience the resistance, revival and existence when principle turns into conscious and conscious becomes poetry; the sole season we are able to comprehend peace, tranquility; the sole season in which humankind discovers and conquers its self and the conscience.