MITCH SNYDER DOES NOT 'FAST'

The story about Mitch Snyder {Style, March 16} unfortunately reinforces Snyder's misuse of the term "fasting." Random House's Unabridged Dictionary defines fast as an "abstinence from food, or a limiting of one's food, especially when voluntary and as a religious observance." Fasting has been known to many religious traditions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam, for many centuries. The purpose is spiritual growth: a fast is conducted without reference to temporal gain or advantage. In fact, a fast is best conducted without other people knowing about it. "When you fast, anoint your head and wash your face so that no one except your heavenly Father . . . may notice your fasting," advises Jesus (Matthew 6:17-18).

Missing from the article is the needed term "hunger strike," defined by Random as a "deliberate refusal to eat, undertaken in protest against imprisonment, improper treatment, or objectionable conditions." Clearly, this, rather than fasting, is the nature of Snyder's repeated tactic.

Neither Christians nor other religious groups own the English language, and Snyder is entirely free to describe himself as a Christian and his hunger strikes as fasting. However, it is not hard to see through his attempt to dignify his manipulative behavior with the aura of ancient religious practice, and The Post should know better. The British press, for example, seems well able to characterize the hunger strikes by prisoners in Northern Ireland as such. Otherwise, physical self-abuse is augmented with linguistic and conceptual abuse. -- David Peyton

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