Underlying Meaning of Siyam
Demystifying Core Terms in the Quran
Since it’s Ramadan, let’s dive into the word siyam.
Siyam is usually translated as fasting. Taqwa, as fear of God. Or God consciousness as translated by the amazing Muhammad Asad:
Fasting is ordained for you as it was ordained for those before you, so that you might remain conscious of God. [Q2:183]
Let’s focus on the word siyam in this short article. Its primary signification is ‘the act of abstaining’. In the context of Ramadan, it’s translated as ‘abstaining from eating and drinking from dawn to dusk’.
In the Quran, it also has the signification of ‘abstaining from speech’.
More secondary significations are listed in the largest Arabic-English lexicon.
Let’s dive a bit deeper than these significations, into the Ocean of Allusions.
When you abstain, you self-deny, which literally means ‘to refuse giving A to B’. In fasting, you refuse giving yourself food. In silence, you refuse to speak.
Therefore, the act of abstaining is more of a ‘non-doing’, than it is a ‘doing’.
In other words, siyam in all its dimensions of meanings is all about non-doing.
We’ll relate this powerful notion of non-doing to the signification of taqwa tomorrow.
Stay tuned and attuned!