The specific niceties of other cultures and religions are often difficult things for outsiders to comprehend. There was once a tale—sadly apocryphal—of a Japanese department store that put on a cheery festive display of the crucifixion of Santa Claus to celebrate Christmas one year, for example.
At least the Japanese, less than 1.5% of whom are Christian, could be excused for not quite grasping the realities of what Christianity actually teaches. Less forgivable is the current trend amongst Christians in the West for completely misunderstanding the meaning of Lent, which, both being moveable feasts, this year happens to coincide almost completely with the Muslim festival of Ramadan.
As both Lent and Ramadan involve fasting, the gullible ‘interfaith relations’ caucus of Christianity have concluded the self-starvation customs of both religions share precisely the same purpose, and so have begun slavishly adapting their own Christian traditions to fit in with Muslim immigrants’ ones, in the name of tolerance, diversity, and peaceful co-existence. And yet, strangely, the Muslim faithful themselves, whilst happy to accept such pleasing early signs of dhimmified self-abasement from their accommodating hosts, have not reciprocated in kind by adapting their own practices to in any way resemble the Christian model.
Pulling a fast one
Admittedly, there is a superficial similarity between Lenten and Ramadan fasting, purely in terms of the simple fact that both naturally involve avoiding eating large amounts of food. But to say on this basis that the two sacred periods are just the same is a complete error: just because a Black Mass involves the lighting of candles inside a church, it doesn’t make it into a real Christian Mass, and dieting for the beach and dieting before surgery do not spring from the same motivations either.
There are plenty of specific practical differences between the seasonal dietary practices of Lent and Ramadan, such as Ramadan fasters being required to forgo not only food, but also water and liquids, between the hours of sunrise and sunset, whereas Christian restrictions are far less severe. More fundamentally, the two periods self-evidently mark completely different things: a spell of repentance and solidarity with Jesus’ forty days of fasting in the desert in the run-up to Easter for Christians, whereas Ramadan is supposed to mark the month the Koran was angelically revealed to Muhammad. Christians are not supposed to believe in the truth of the Koran, and Muslims are not supposed to believe in the truth of Easter, so how can the two festivals possibly be related?
In practice, quite apart from the theology involved, there are also key divergences between the social purposes of Lent and Ramadan. In general, Lent is more of a personal, private occasion of internal spiritual reflection, whereas in Islam, Ramadan is the precise reverse: a very public affirmation of both your faith and your wider social allegiance to the ummah, or global Muslim community, above all other loyalties, including to your country and its merely man-made body of secular, non-sharia law.
By flexing their muscles and demanding ostentatious public observance of sacraments like iftar, the daily breaking of the fast at sunset, upon irrelevant occasions like in the middle of live, televised evening football fixtures, Muslims in the West are effectively declaring themselves to be above the secular laws of the land and saying that all others must submit to their way of life now they are over here, not the other way around.
Breaks in play for religious purposes are expressly forbidden by the football authorities in France, for example, but the Muslim players just stop and have them during Ramadan anyway, their greater allegiance being to the sharia of the Koran, not the official rulebook of the French Football Federation. Any Christian players who happen to be fasting during the same period, by contrast, just have to quietly get on with it, considering such privations to be private.
People are being Lent on
If openly practising fasting for Ramadan is intended primarily as a sign of communal allegiance to the ummah, then whenever any silly Christians submit towards overtly fasting between dawn and dusk to mark Ramadan themselves, the main way the average Muslim will interpret such actions is not as a generous liberal gesture towards interfaith tolerance, but as a weakling gesture of abasement and an initial step towards the supplicant pledging formal allegiance towards the ummah himself—that is, as a precursor towards his or her conversion to Islam.
Laudatory stories are increasingly popping up in Western media, grooming readers into joining this growing trend of thinking Lent all one big tent. A recent piece in British broadsheet The Times featured testimonies from various kuffar Christian Londoners who had decided to fast for Ramadan in solidarity with their Muslim neighbours in order to “break down barriers” and “show support” for them in their ordeal. Do London’s Muslims ever “show support” for Christians by participating in their religious ceremonies and strictures? No, because that would go against their religion, which, unlike the Christians interviewed, the Muslims still appear to actually believe in.
This is becoming a particular fad amongst London’s non-Muslim schoolchildren, who can evidently see which way the demographic wind is blowing. So can some of their educators. One white teaching assistant interviewed said she was fasting “to support her predominantly Muslim colleagues”—or assimilating with her surrounding colonisers in order not to incur their disapproval, maybe. The woman may not be a full member of the ummah as yet, but she’s certainly become ummah-adjacent.
And, where your employer is Muslim, they have even more leverage to enforce unofficial compliance. One Muslim businesswoman is praised by The Times for holding an annual feast to allow her staff to break their final Ramadan fast together on the date of Eid, for which “this year she has introduced an initiative to let non-Muslim employees try fasting” too. What if they say no, and pull out a large sausage roll instead? No promotion for them, one would imagine.
Misl-Eiding the faithful
Particularly disturbing is that many participants in this trend are actual Christian priests and bishops, who say things like Muslims and Christians should fast together because “our sacred texts invite us to peace.” The Bible and Quran are not “our” shared sacred texts, though, are they? They are completely incompatible. Even the Vatican puts out statements nowadays urging believers to use the temporal coincidence of Ramadan and Lent “as a compass for building bridges rather than walls.” It’s a good job European Christians didn’t decide to build bridges rather than walls against Islam at Vienna in 1683.
Some Christian priests fast for Ramadan, not Lent, as a supposed means of combatting “rising anti-Muslim bigotry,” such as the truly bemusing act of people “associating Muslims with the atrocities committed by Hamas.” Fancy being so religiously ignorant as to associate Islam with Hamas. It would almost be as bad as associating Lent with Easter.
Other leftist pseudo-clergy completely misinterpret the point of Ramadan fasts as being a charitable meditational means to “become more aware of those who go hungry without choice”, such as all those starving Somalis in Minnesota. The particular bleeding heart quoted here is U.S. black Catholic priest Bryan N. Massingale, who claims that:
When I keep Ramadan, I am participating in a discipline practiced by 1.8 billion people around the world. We are all keeping this sacred season at the same time; we are all in it together. Something I regret about Lent is that Catholics do not really have a sense that we are engaging in this 40-day period of preparation for Easter together. Too often, we look upon Lent as a kind of a 40-day personal improvement project … We Christians have become far too individualistic in our spirituality. In the Muslim world, Ramadan is not an individual exercise. Muslims keep Ramadan as a people. Ramadan’s fasting is an act of communal worship and prayer.
One which, merely by participating in, Father Massingale inadvertently becomes an honorary quasi-convert of. But is it really possible to fast for Ramadan and remain a good Christian, whilst simultaneously winning the eternal respect and gratitude of the Muslim ummah?
To find out, I consulted one of today’s many flourishing online ‘Ask an Imam’ services in search of an official clerical fatwa upon the issue. Sure enough, on the valuable site ‘Islam Q&A’, I found the following important query: “In our town, there is a Christian man who fasts for the month of Ramadan, but does not pray [to Allah, just to Jesus]. Is this fast of his valid?” The considered doctrinal answer of the imam was as follows—if you’re short of time, it basically just says, “Hahahaha, no!”:
With regard to his fasting or praying when he is still a Christian, that is not valid; his prayer is invalid, his fasting is invalid, and it will not benefit him, because one of the conditions of these acts of worship is being Muslim. If he prays when he is not a Muslim and fasts when he is not a Muslim, then his act of worship is invalid. You who are close to him should advise him and tell him about Islam , and inform him that it is essential to believe in Prophet Muhammad (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) and that he is truly the Messenger of Allah to all people, to the jinn and mankind, and that he has to make a commitment to Islam by directing his worship sincerely to Allah Alone, and by giving up the Christian belief that the Messiah is the son of God and belief in the Trinity. He should give up all of that and believe that Allah is one God, Who has no partner or associate, and that [Jesus] is the slave of Allah and His Messenger, and is not the son of God. Exalted be Allah far above that.
Who do you believe is more likely to be telling the informed truth about Ramadan here? The gullible American trendy vicar, or the realist Muslim imam? Those religiously illiterate priests who want their flocks to all start observing heathen Islamic dietary restrictions for Holy Arab Moon-Month, not Lent, are starved of common sense more than anything else.
During Lent, Fasts of Crescent and Cross Are Not the Same
Photo montage: With a cross of ash on his forehead, a man prays following an Ash Wednesday Mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle on February 22, 2023 in Washington, DC / Muslims break their fast with iftar meals during Ramadan at the Jama Masjid in Ahmedabad on March 17, 2026.
CHIP SOMODEVILLA / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / GETTY IMAGES VIA AFP and Shammi MEHRA / AFP
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The specific niceties of other cultures and religions are often difficult things for outsiders to comprehend. There was once a tale—sadly apocryphal—of a Japanese department store that put on a cheery festive display of the crucifixion of Santa Claus to celebrate Christmas one year, for example.
At least the Japanese, less than 1.5% of whom are Christian, could be excused for not quite grasping the realities of what Christianity actually teaches. Less forgivable is the current trend amongst Christians in the West for completely misunderstanding the meaning of Lent, which, both being moveable feasts, this year happens to coincide almost completely with the Muslim festival of Ramadan.
As both Lent and Ramadan involve fasting, the gullible ‘interfaith relations’ caucus of Christianity have concluded the self-starvation customs of both religions share precisely the same purpose, and so have begun slavishly adapting their own Christian traditions to fit in with Muslim immigrants’ ones, in the name of tolerance, diversity, and peaceful co-existence. And yet, strangely, the Muslim faithful themselves, whilst happy to accept such pleasing early signs of dhimmified self-abasement from their accommodating hosts, have not reciprocated in kind by adapting their own practices to in any way resemble the Christian model.
Pulling a fast one
Admittedly, there is a superficial similarity between Lenten and Ramadan fasting, purely in terms of the simple fact that both naturally involve avoiding eating large amounts of food. But to say on this basis that the two sacred periods are just the same is a complete error: just because a Black Mass involves the lighting of candles inside a church, it doesn’t make it into a real Christian Mass, and dieting for the beach and dieting before surgery do not spring from the same motivations either.
There are plenty of specific practical differences between the seasonal dietary practices of Lent and Ramadan, such as Ramadan fasters being required to forgo not only food, but also water and liquids, between the hours of sunrise and sunset, whereas Christian restrictions are far less severe. More fundamentally, the two periods self-evidently mark completely different things: a spell of repentance and solidarity with Jesus’ forty days of fasting in the desert in the run-up to Easter for Christians, whereas Ramadan is supposed to mark the month the Koran was angelically revealed to Muhammad. Christians are not supposed to believe in the truth of the Koran, and Muslims are not supposed to believe in the truth of Easter, so how can the two festivals possibly be related?
In practice, quite apart from the theology involved, there are also key divergences between the social purposes of Lent and Ramadan. In general, Lent is more of a personal, private occasion of internal spiritual reflection, whereas in Islam, Ramadan is the precise reverse: a very public affirmation of both your faith and your wider social allegiance to the ummah, or global Muslim community, above all other loyalties, including to your country and its merely man-made body of secular, non-sharia law.
By flexing their muscles and demanding ostentatious public observance of sacraments like iftar, the daily breaking of the fast at sunset, upon irrelevant occasions like in the middle of live, televised evening football fixtures, Muslims in the West are effectively declaring themselves to be above the secular laws of the land and saying that all others must submit to their way of life now they are over here, not the other way around.
Breaks in play for religious purposes are expressly forbidden by the football authorities in France, for example, but the Muslim players just stop and have them during Ramadan anyway, their greater allegiance being to the sharia of the Koran, not the official rulebook of the French Football Federation. Any Christian players who happen to be fasting during the same period, by contrast, just have to quietly get on with it, considering such privations to be private.
People are being Lent on
If openly practising fasting for Ramadan is intended primarily as a sign of communal allegiance to the ummah, then whenever any silly Christians submit towards overtly fasting between dawn and dusk to mark Ramadan themselves, the main way the average Muslim will interpret such actions is not as a generous liberal gesture towards interfaith tolerance, but as a weakling gesture of abasement and an initial step towards the supplicant pledging formal allegiance towards the ummah himself—that is, as a precursor towards his or her conversion to Islam.
Laudatory stories are increasingly popping up in Western media, grooming readers into joining this growing trend of thinking Lent all one big tent. A recent piece in British broadsheet The Times featured testimonies from various kuffar Christian Londoners who had decided to fast for Ramadan in solidarity with their Muslim neighbours in order to “break down barriers” and “show support” for them in their ordeal. Do London’s Muslims ever “show support” for Christians by participating in their religious ceremonies and strictures? No, because that would go against their religion, which, unlike the Christians interviewed, the Muslims still appear to actually believe in.
This is becoming a particular fad amongst London’s non-Muslim schoolchildren, who can evidently see which way the demographic wind is blowing. So can some of their educators. One white teaching assistant interviewed said she was fasting “to support her predominantly Muslim colleagues”—or assimilating with her surrounding colonisers in order not to incur their disapproval, maybe. The woman may not be a full member of the ummah as yet, but she’s certainly become ummah-adjacent.
And, where your employer is Muslim, they have even more leverage to enforce unofficial compliance. One Muslim businesswoman is praised by The Times for holding an annual feast to allow her staff to break their final Ramadan fast together on the date of Eid, for which “this year she has introduced an initiative to let non-Muslim employees try fasting” too. What if they say no, and pull out a large sausage roll instead? No promotion for them, one would imagine.
Misl-Eiding the faithful
Particularly disturbing is that many participants in this trend are actual Christian priests and bishops, who say things like Muslims and Christians should fast together because “our sacred texts invite us to peace.” The Bible and Quran are not “our” shared sacred texts, though, are they? They are completely incompatible. Even the Vatican puts out statements nowadays urging believers to use the temporal coincidence of Ramadan and Lent “as a compass for building bridges rather than walls.” It’s a good job European Christians didn’t decide to build bridges rather than walls against Islam at Vienna in 1683.
Some Christian priests fast for Ramadan, not Lent, as a supposed means of combatting “rising anti-Muslim bigotry,” such as the truly bemusing act of people “associating Muslims with the atrocities committed by Hamas.” Fancy being so religiously ignorant as to associate Islam with Hamas. It would almost be as bad as associating Lent with Easter.
Other leftist pseudo-clergy completely misinterpret the point of Ramadan fasts as being a charitable meditational means to “become more aware of those who go hungry without choice”, such as all those starving Somalis in Minnesota. The particular bleeding heart quoted here is U.S. black Catholic priest Bryan N. Massingale, who claims that:
One which, merely by participating in, Father Massingale inadvertently becomes an honorary quasi-convert of. But is it really possible to fast for Ramadan and remain a good Christian, whilst simultaneously winning the eternal respect and gratitude of the Muslim ummah?
To find out, I consulted one of today’s many flourishing online ‘Ask an Imam’ services in search of an official clerical fatwa upon the issue. Sure enough, on the valuable site ‘Islam Q&A’, I found the following important query: “In our town, there is a Christian man who fasts for the month of Ramadan, but does not pray [to Allah, just to Jesus]. Is this fast of his valid?” The considered doctrinal answer of the imam was as follows—if you’re short of time, it basically just says, “Hahahaha, no!”:
Who do you believe is more likely to be telling the informed truth about Ramadan here? The gullible American trendy vicar, or the realist Muslim imam? Those religiously illiterate priests who want their flocks to all start observing heathen Islamic dietary restrictions for Holy Arab Moon-Month, not Lent, are starved of common sense more than anything else.
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