Extract from a letter from Frithjof Schuon dated 19 October 1974
I am glad to learn you have finally desisted from fasting, for the body needs all its strength when it is ailing, that is, one needs strength to eliminate an ailment that risks establishing itself if it can profit from a weakening and lack of resistance. In short, one has the right to be prudent, especially at our age; there are fuqarā' who are not so, although our perspective does not require any quasi-heroic zeal on the plane of the sharī'ah; the emphasis being on the Dhikr.
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dhikr "remembrance" of God, based upon the repeated invocation of His Name; central to Sufi practice, where the remembrance often consists of the single word
Allāh.
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