Al-Baqarah 183: Oh you who believe! Fasting has been made obligatory upon you just as it was obligatory upon people before you so that you will abstain (from sins).

Here

now Allah Almighty, to people, to those who believe, calls out. Look, what does He say? O you who believe! Fasting has been prescribed for you as it was prescribed for the communities before you, so that you may guard yourselves, He says. Fasting. So Allah Almighty knows what the human body, this body He created, will need. Would He not know? He rests it for a certain period. We set out from here by car. I go to Samsun, to Ordu, to Rize, or to any region of Turkey. Five hundred kilometers, a thousand kilometers, I keep going.

It happens that sometimes the car starts to overheat in the summer months. What will you do? You will rest it. Otherwise the car will leave you stranded. What does it do? It boils over and leaves you stranded. You are obliged to rest it. The human body is like that too. The food it takes in builds up stores in the body, those stores make people sluggish, restrict their movements, and every kind of illness and filth starts to come from it. So a person will rest his body just as he rests the car. Allah Almighty made fasting obligatory; between dawn and evening, by cutting you off from eating and drinking, by making you struggle with your nafs, He both protects your body and strives to bring your nafs to perfection.

Allah, who created the human body, so that the human body can stay healthy, has shown people the ways to protect their bodies. At the same time, through people protecting their bodies, Allah Almighty has made people worship Him. Whoever obeys Him has worshipped Him.

He has given us the bodies in trust. I will call you to account for how you used these bodies, He says. I will call you to account. Our Lord says of the body He gave in trust: use it like this, He says. If you don't use it so, tomorrow on the Day of Judgment, at the Supreme Court, how will you give account in the presence of Allah Almighty?

I say to people, to some people: O you who are intelligent yet lacking in reason; not fasting, making it a matter of pride and arrogance, following Satan's footsteps, seeing an ego in himself in it, with that whim breaking the fast and thinking himself a hero, such a person both harms his own body and, if he only knew the slap he will get tomorrow at that Supreme Court, if he only knew that torment,

with that grandeur in himself, his own existence, by breaking the fast, that is, by eating, seeing it as a superiority over those who fast, if he walks around proudly in that superiority, tomorrow he will suffer its pain very much. Both in this world and in the hereafter.

I am seventy-two years old.

I don't know what illness is.

But since my childhood, since my childhood, my heart has been with my Lord. I am among people, but very far from people. Neither their words nor their talk affect me. My world is separate. I am inside that world of mine. So if inside that world germs are Allah's soldiers, germs do not settle there.

Germs do not get in there. Those who explain the verses wrongly say Allah says 'germs are My soldiers, I set them on whom I will'; Allah does not set them on whom He wills, He sets them on the one who wants it: he breaks his fast, does not pray, (?), so that the body can serve itself, if he lives far from the rules our Lord has set, he invites every kind of illness upon himself. Today hospital doors are crowded with every kind of illness.

Pay attention to these: most of them, neither in their prayer nor in their supplication nor in their fasting. In their fasting, their prayer, their supplication, if there is any, who knows after what age they started. These too have received that wound, they have received the wound that will become cancer. Over time that unrest has dragged them into that illness.

If Islam were sick, in the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him) Muslims would have been sick. A doctor comes and settles, but somehow the doctor never comes across a patient. In the end he packs up his bits and pieces and leaves.

They inform the Prophet. The doctor is leaving. (?), he says. He comes. Why are you leaving? he says. O Messenger of Allah, I here... there is no doctor. I came here thinking I would earn my living here. Nobody here gets sick, he says. How will I make a living here, he says. And the Prophet: as long as a Muslim (?) Islam, he does not easily fall ill. Let us assign you a salary from the treasury, he says. You stay here as a means, he says. As a means.

The first condition of not being ill. My advice to you. Trust in Allah. First. Trust in Allah. Knowing that everything comes from Allah and being content with it, knowing that a burden he cannot carry will not be loaded on a person's back, opening one's heart to Allah and clinging to Him eagerly: such people do not fall ill.

If Allah is going to give a trial, He gives it lightly, tests and it passes.

Fasting is one of the acts of worship that play a major role in protecting the human body. People who feed their bodies for 11 months with all kinds of food and nourishment, through the month of Ramadan, by resting their bodies for 30 days, become invigorated. That is why, what do they say? Fast and be healthy, they say, don't they? With the food people take in over 11 months, the cells become heavy with excess food and layers of fat form in a person. Through these fat layers people's movements are restricted and people cannot make the movements they want. In this situation people struggle. When people's mobility and liveliness are lost, the body's energy source cannot burn the food it takes in; and as the human body (?) in this way, (?) people will lose their health.

Allah Almighty also decrees so. I do not love my fat state, He says. So you will not take in too much food. And what does the Prophet say? Get up when you are about to be full, he says. And these are all connected to one another. Connected. Look, we are not denying the hadiths, mind you. We cite the hadiths. We deny what is not hadith. So with the month of Ramadan, on condition of fasting, the food a person has taken in over eleven months, he will burn up the fats in the body. In this process the fresh food that comes in, nourishing a person, will give people vigor. At the same time, with the melting of the body's fats, people will gain mobility and recover their health.

The human body is a trust Allah Almighty has given to man. In a verse: for the way you used the bodies I have given you I will call you to account, He decrees. If this body is a trust given to us by our Lord, how the trust is to be preserved Allah Almighty makes known to people. In terms of protecting the human body, people are bound to carry out Allah's command; they are obliged. People, however, the preservation of these bodies entrusted to them they do not keep, purely because they are hostile to Allah; they betray it. In this case they wrong both their own bodies and, in the hereafter, their souls.

Not to his body. In this world, to his body. He will carry it, endure it. In the hereafter, to his soul. Because soul, nafs and life are one; the body is separate. After testifying to us, our bodies will die a second time. We will be raised twice and made to die twice. According to the verse. He will make our bodies die, and as our bodies die He will say: you are being returned to the First Creator. In this case that person will have wronged his body in this world and his soul in the hereafter. Pay close attention to the words.

Such people are people who are so unjust to their own selves. Because of fasting's benefits for the human body, Allah Almighty, who wills no injustice to the worlds, decrees that fasting, as it was prescribed for the communities that came before you, has also been prescribed for you. That is, the communities before us also, for the health of their bodies, fasted, and they too were commanded to fast. So that you may be protected. Allah Almighty's word is both outward and inward. What is meant by 'so that you may be protected': if a person heeds what Allah Almighty says, fulfills the pillars of Islam, grasps that his body will be protected by fasting, and continues his worship, with the rewards he receives as a result of his worship, when he passes on to the hereafter, that person is protected.

That is, he attains Allah's mercy. Yes.