FIQH OF FASTING free pdf download

Fiqh of Fasting

FIQH OF FASTING

Fasting (siyaam) in Arabic linguistically means to restrain or abstain from. According to the Sharee‘ah it means “abstaining from food, drink, sexual intercourse, and other acts mentioned in the divine law during the day in the prescribed way.

It is followed by abstinence from foolish talk, obscenity, and other forms of prohibited and disliked speech, due to the narration of hadeeths forbidding them during fasting more so than at other times.

 [The abstinence should be] during a specified time, and under special conditions which are explained in the following hadeeths. The beginning of its obligation was in the second year after the Hijrah.2

“Except in the case of a person 5 who has been in the habit of fasting this way. He may fast on those days.” The hadeeth is proof for the prohibition of fasting a day or two before Ramadaan.

After narrating this hadeeth, at-Tirmithee said: “Doing this according to the people of knowledge was considered disliked (makrooh).

They disliked that a person fast before the arrival of Ramadaan based on the very meaning of the term Ramadaan.”

At-Tirmithee’s statement “based on the meaning of Ramadaan,” restricts the prohibition to precautionary fasts, and not fasting in general, like voluntary fasts, fasts due to vows, and other similar fasts.

That restriction obviously implies that preceding Ramadaan by any other kind of fast is permissible.

 But that position is in conflict with the obvious meaning of the hadeeth which is general.

Nothing is excluded from it except the fast of someone who regularly fasts fixed days and they coincide with the last days of Sha‘baan. If