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The beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on Friday evening Feb. 28 brings us back to the ways sacred calendars are created.

The first way a year was calculated in human history was by the cycle of the moon and not the sun. It is virtually impossible to calculate the time of a solar year but a lunar year is easy. Twelve cycles of new moon to new moon in a lunar month makes one year … almost. The lunar year is roughly 11 days shorter than a solar year. What this means is that if, let us say, a harvest holiday is calculated on a lunar calendar, it will be 11 days earlier each year and will eventually not mark the harvest at all. So the way that the Jewish calendar, which is lunar, fixed this problem was to add another month to the year every few years and in this way make sure that the harvest festivals of the fall, for example, always fell during the fall and Passover always fell during the springtime. Christianity made the same kind of adjustments to its sacred calendar so that Easter would also always celebrate spring and so that Easter bunnies would not have to hop around in the snow!

Ramadan is not tied to an agricultural event and so it does not have such agricultural restraints. It is the holiday celebrating the first revelation to the prophet Mohammad by the angel Gabriel in around the year 610. This freedom from the cycle of nature made Ramadan a pure lunar holiday calculated on the ninth month of the year. If Ramadan “floated” through all the months of the year that was just fine. In fact, one of the most beautiful Ramadan blessings that I was taught by Muslim friends is, “May you celebrate Ramadan in every season of the year.”

The main ritual of Ramadan is fasting (sawm) which along with the declaration of faith (shahadah), pilgrimage (haj), prayer (salah) and charity (zakat) constitute the five pillars of Islam. The fasting is a complete fast every day for a month from dawn to dark. A pre-dawn meal called suhoor is eaten along with a post sundown meal called iftar. Muslims who are ill or pregnant or young are exempt from the ritual of fasting. The fasting on Ramadan by almost one out of every four human beings on planet earth who are Muslim is profoundly impressive. It is a real sacrifice made for a real faith and it is accompanied by acts of charity so that the fast is linked to gratitude. Ramadan fasting is a remote human achievement.

I wish all my Muslim friends and readers a Ramadan Mubarack, a joyous Ramadan, and also a Jewish greeting for our fast day of Yom Kippur, “Easy over the fast.”

Unfortunately, the war in Gaza and in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran have left a terrible taste in the mouths of some Jews and Christians about the spiritual value of Islam. This is a shame and I want to speak out against such prejudice. The purpose of the God Squad is not to be either a critic or a cheerleader for any specific religion. My job is to lift up what is good and speak humbly about what is not good yet. I believe that it is morally incumbent upon all people of faith to lift up the parts of other religions that deserve praise while also not holding back on legitimate criticism of the ways some religions have gone wrong.

Let me say something about the distortions of Islam in our time. When a band of murderers shout “allah hu akbar” “Allah is great” before murdering a mother and her two children they are not praising Allah. They are not practicing Islam. They are not fulfilling the high moral principles of Islam. They are perverting Islam. Their words are not a cry of faith but an obscenity.

Such radical penetrations by radical evil of noble faiths has happened before in history to Christianity during the Inquisition and Crusades. There is nothing more tragic than the perversion of a religion by evil ones who seek to distort it. What we must know now and say now is what Elie Wiesel said about Germans after the Holocaust, “Only the killers are guilty.” Let us all join our true Muslim brothers and sisters of compassion and charity and faith in praying that the true spirit of Islam will triumph over its perverters. Let us pray that the eid el fitr feast that will end the month of Ramadan will be shared by all the children of Abraham who are ready and willing to usher in a new day of peace.

(Send ALL QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS to The God Squad via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com. Rabbi Gellman is the author of several books, including “Religion for Dummies,” co-written with Fr. Tom Hartman. Also, the new God Squad podcast is now available.)

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