For Muslims, Ramadan is a commitment to self-discipline, generosity and peace. Pauline Hanson, take note | Susan Carland

As Australian Muslims prepared for Ramadan this week, the leader of the second most popular political party in the country, Senator Pauline Hanson, said of them: “Their religion concerns me because [of] what it says in the Qur’an … They hate Westerners … You say, ‘Well, there’s good Muslims out there.’ Well, I’m sorry. How can you tell me there are good Muslims?”

None of this is surprising. This same senator has twice worn a burqa into parliament, wrongly claimed that halal certification funds terrorism, and wanted a royal commission into Islam.

At the same time as Hanson made her comments, Sydney’s Lakemba mosque has said it is facing “the most alarming situation since Cronulla” due to repeated threatening letters arriving at its doors. A large Melbourne mosque says it has increased security ahead of Ramadan due to Islamophobic incidents. This is after repeated reports of Islamophobia in Australia being at the highest recorded levels.

Happy Ramadan to us.

For Muslims, Ramadan commemorates the final time divine words crossed a metaphysical boundary into human language and crystallised as the Qur’an. In this month, adult Muslims abstain from all food, drink (yes, even water), and sex from before sunrise until after sunset. In Australia this year, that makes for about 16 hours each day.

In a world where morality is increasingly privatised, the Muslim commitment to ritual confounds many Australians. This is why the sight of Muslims praying alongside a protest in Sydney last week was pondered as possibly “baiting” police, or at least behaviour that warranted violent intervention. That the prayer was not being conducted to make a point, to provoke or threaten, but was simply the fulfilment of a religious obligation without political strategy, was unfathomable to many.

Ramadan also confuses people. Non-Muslim attitudes towards Ramadan range from ignorance, to scepticism, to outright disbelief. To them, the fast seems gruelling – even masochistic. People often look at me with concern and pity knowing it’s Ramadan. “That’s so sad,” a friend observed when I explained Ramadan.

But Ramadan is not a desert, it’s a harbour. After 11 months of feeling battered on an ocean of conflict, chaos and pain, the annual Ramadan is a sheltered port I wearily float in to. The noise and the cruelty continue to hum, but the increased ritual, community, and reflection gently blanket me, allowing for a more patient, more generous, kinder version of myself to grow. Yes, Ramadan is physically and spiritually challenging, but it is also deeply rewarding and fulfilling, like running a marathon or delivering a baby.

And yet fasting is not the point of Ramadan. It was never the point. Muslim religious texts tell us that if all we get from Ramadan is hunger and thirst, we’ve wasted our time.

Fasting from food, water and sex – our most basic desires and needs – is done to show us we can gain mastery of ourselves. If we can control our instinctive reach for a snack through nothing but internal discipline, then we know we also have within our power the ability to control our other instincts that we all too easily indulge – anger, selfishness, gossip, contempt, spite, conceit. The behaviours that are so easy to slide into and are so socially corrosive. Ramadan is meant to make us good people. Good Muslims.

Which highlights the irony of Hanson disputing now that there are any good Muslims. With Ramadan, Muslims embark on a rigorous month of trying to internally eradicate the very traits – contempt, suspicion, hate – directed at us.

When later pushed on the point Hanson acknowledged perhaps good Muslims did exist, saying a non-practising Muslim woman had once stood for her party. However, should we think she was now tempering her previous comments, Hanson then affirmed, “I’m not going to apologise”.

Beyond disproving the tired tropes of Muslims hating the west (the Australian Muslim surgeons, doctors, nurses, teachers, counsellors, cleaners, volunteers, pharmacists, paramedics, police officers, firefighters, psychologists and vets who serve this country every day beg to differ), there is something else Australian Muslims may have to offer this country: a month-long disciplined commitment to trying to be a better person. Of guarding your speech, of generosity, of kindness, of seeking forgiveness, of standing up for justice even if it’s against your own self.

There are good Muslims – because we work at it. Maybe a few other Australians could work at it, too.