CONCESSION OF NOT FASTING
By: Allama Abdul Aziz Ben Abdullah Ben Baz
Question: At times, I get a very severe pain in my neck which needs analgesic tablets to relieve me because I suffer from cervical spondylitis. It happened once or twice in the month of Ramadhan that the pain was so severe that I could not bear it any longer and broke my fast to take the tablets. Should I still feed one poor person for breaking my fast? What procedure should I follow it happens again? Perhaps I should add that I get such a severe pain two or three times a month.
Answer: It is important that a Muslim should know enough Islamic teachings to enable him to fulfil his duties in the proper manner without accidently invalidating any duty he is fulfilling. To do this, he needs to study a few Islamic principles and learn the regulations which govern each of the main duties of Islam. There are certain matters which you can fulfill once you know the Islamic position on them. Once you learn that it is forbidden to steal, lie, backbite, give a false testimony, drink intoxicants, you can refrain from doing any of these vices immediately, without any need to learn any thing more concerning them. It is needless to say that if you undertake a more detailed study of the Islamic principles, you will be able to understand how Islam views every aspect of human activity, but that is not particularly essential to implement such teaching of Islam which relate to these particular aspects.
On the other hand, it is not enough that you learn that it is your duty to pray, pay Zakah, fast or do the pilgrimage. In each one of these, you have to make a further study in order to know when or how you have to fulfil any of these duties. Moreover, you should learn what thing to avoid in order not to render your efforts null and void. How can any Muslim offer a valid prayer, if he does not know that he has to have ablution before it and to stand up facing the direction which leads from his spot to the Ka‘abah in Makkah, and that he should offer five prayers every day, and that each one of them has its time range during which it must be offered? How can one fast properly if he does not know that it is during the month of Ramadhan that fasting is a duty, or that he should start this fasting at dawn and finish at sunset?
Fasting in the month of Ramadhan in one of the main Islamic duties. Every Muslim who is able to do so must fast every day of the moth of Ramadhan from dawn to dusk, during which time he may not eat or drink or have sex with his wife. Allah knows that people may go through certain conditions when they cannot fulfil the duties of fasting or when its fulfillment presents considerable hardship. Therefore, he has allowed people who may have such conditions for doing so, requiring them at the same time to compensate for the days of Ramadhan during which they could not fast by fasting later in the year an equal number of days to these days. This means that the idea of compensating for non-fasting in Ramadhan is acceptable while such an idea in not acceptable in another major Islamic duty; namely, the obligatory prayers. It is not open to any person to decide that he is unable to offer them at a later time. This principle is acceptable in-fasting on certain conditions. Moreover, the compensation is of a duration similar to the concession. If a person does not fast two days in Ramadhan for valid reasons he has to compensate for them by fasting two days (sometime) later. There is no punishment and no need for undertaking an additional duty by way of atonment.
This situation which allow or require a Muslim not to fast during the month of Ramadhan are illness, traveling and, for women only, being pregnant, breastfeeding and having period. There are certain details for each of these conditions.
When people know about the concession of not fasting when one is ill or traveling, they assume that the illness must be of the severe kind and that the travel must be of the very tiring type to qualify the ill person or the traveller to make use of this concession. This is not right. Allah has stated this condition in the Holy Qura’n in the most general of terms. Therefore, any situation which people normally describe as illness in all that is needed for a person to make use of Allah’s concession. The only thing required of him is to compensate for each day he missed for a valid reason after Ramadhan. It is not necessary that those compensatory days be offered consecutively. Compensatory fasting may be taken at any time during the rest of the year until the next month of Ramadhan is due.
Exemption from fasting during illness or travel is a concession of which all Muslims may avail themselves. If they fast, then their fasting is valid, although it is perhaps more preferable they should avail themselves of the concession. In the case of a woman in her period or in her postnatal bleeding period, non-fasting is mandatory. If she fast, her fasting is not acceptable. Indeed, she puts herself in a difficult position if she does. Compensation by fasting a similar number of days would still be required in these cases.
As for a woman who is pregnant or who is breast-feeding, she may not fast if she fears for her health or (for the health of) her baby. I will come to the compensation she has to offer in a little while. My reader asks about feeding a poor person. This is a compensation for not fasting which was required of Muslims in the very early days of Islam when fasting was not obligatory. A Muslim could then choose not to fast, but to feed a poor person instead. Ever since the second year of the Prophet’s settlement in Madinah, fasting in the month of Ramadhan became obligatory on all Muslims who are able to undertake this duty. It is no longer a matter of choice between fasting and feeding a poor person. However, if a person is in such a condition that makes him unable to fast in Ramadhan and unable to fast later, what can he do? The answer is that compensation by feeding a poor person in operative in this case. For each day of Ramadhan, he should give every poor person two meals of the average type he has in his home normally. He may, if he so wishes, give the poor person the cost of that meal in cash, according to a number of eminent scholars. The persons to whom this opinion remains valid are: (1) a very old man or woman who can no longer bear the difficulty of fasting from dawn to dusk; (2) a person who is chronically ill and has little hope of recovery; and (3) a woman, who is pregnant or breast feeding, particularly one who finds herself pregnant this year, breast-feeding next year, pregnant again the following year and breast-feeding the year after that. She is thus in a similar situation to a person who is chronically ill. In all these cases, compensation may be made by way of feeding a poor person for one day (two meals) in place of each missed day of fasting.
In this condition which my reader has put to me, this last method of compensation does not apply. When he has this pain, which he says he has two or three times each month, he may go ahead and have his painkiller tablet. What he is required to do is to fast one day in compensation for each day of non-fasting in Ramadhan.