Q: What if the Fast is too long for me? Mufti Abu Layth

[Music] [Music] right so ah what if the fast is too long and difficult for me to bear what a question what a question huh so if it's a

um obviously very subjective I mean is 5 hours too long is it's it's a subjective question but to be fair there's some shared or what some inter subjectivity Allah Allah these terms right so the thing is now so what can possibly done and it's very relevant to the UK because the fast here can reach on average I think 21 hours some places even probably a bit more or

at least 20 hours in certain places so it's an incredibly long amount of time to be fasting so what can you do D well one you can just not fast ah don't worry about it man just chill I think no on a serious now I'm actually being serious right if if a person felt that let's say they tried it and it was they just couldn't cope if they felt I can't do this is oh my god I've got health is

rating I can't handle this then they do have that option to not fast and to make up for it later on when I say not fast I don't mean they don't have to make up for it they obviously have to make up for it but that's if they felt that they cannot do that that option is there that Allah will not take you to account for which you are not capable of and you are you are the person as IM sh says who makes that call okay like you make that Sicky call in the morning oh sick tilt your head backwards just to

find sound a bit more ill I'm not feeling thing is this is your this is your call so if you say look you it's making you sick you can't do it it's your call if you can do it you will be rewarded immensely that's what people will generally say and to be fair I suppose fasting as you kind of get along with it it does it gets easier as you get along as you kind of go along with it I think the more difficult things are probably stuff like thirst or things like caffeine

withdrawal actually and stuff like this is what gets people um okay there is a second opinion here um one which doesn't personally settle or lie too well with me but it's an opinion nonetheless and it is it traced back in our recent times to she Muhammad Abdul uh and later of alar and later um and Rashid and other you know and it continues today to be the official position for such circumstances

of the and many of the today they say that in any place which has a day longer than 18 hours and the question here well how did they get 18 hours well my understanding how they did that is well they took day and night and put it in half and that gives you 12 hours each and they thought well let's say one of the halves was to be compromised what would be considered clear compromise and anything beyond the halfway point of that half would be a

clear compromise I'm just this is this was me trying to understand their logic I don't know if they did actually do this work it out like the way I'm saying but that's what I believe they did they saw that they took the half which is let's say night so according to them a perfect day with a right equilibrium should be 12 hours 12 hours 12 hours night 12 hours day so if you took the 12 hours night and would to compromise it what would be a clear compromise and in my understanding it would have been more than half of it so half of it would be 6 hours you add that to the daylight so that's 18 so this is what I think they

why they came up with the term 18 hours so they said anything with 18 hours or more of daylight what they those people can do is they can take the timing of the people of mekah why they chose mekah is because they said well that's Makkah Medina where the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam was so we know and and it's close to the equator and it has a like an equilibrium like the time doesn't change so radically so they say well you can take the and you can fast in accordance with their times and open the fast in accordance with their times even though you live let's say in the UK but you will be opening your fast let's say as

opposed to let's say everybody else opens it at 9:30 or 9:45 or 10 p.m. you're opening it at about 6:00 p.m. because makah in Makkah it's Sunset around 6 you see the problem with this is it contradicts your perception because you can see it to be daylight and you are going against your actual perception and I feel in a way you're kind of violating the taboo nature which kind of it also can serve

as a safeguarding mechanism for you to keep the fast because people don't want to eat during the daylight out and that's like a taboo so this in a way kind of breaks that down too and I I mean I don't know it just doesn't settle too well with with me that understanding of uh it is a fatwa nonetheless of many of the uhar and but I don't personally uh find it too comforting there is a third position which settles a lot better with me and that is that in these countries

with excessive daylight hours what what a person can do is they can Branch more into their sahur time you see because in countries like the UK we in addition to excessive hours have another issue which is what people refer to sometimes as the Twilight issue and that is that we can't true accurately determine when fuder begins and it's being estimated so nobody can actually tell because the the whiteness that's supposed to appear for Dawn which

is supposed to tell that fud begins never disappears after M so that whiteness just stays throughout the entire night which are then means that okay at what point did fuder kick in and we can't actually tell that so what we do is we estimate it either in accordance with the calculations that were going before so we say well hey before this Twilight period kicked in every day let's say it was fuder at I don't know 3:30 and it was going forward by 2 minutes or backwards by 2 minutes we're going to continue with that

calculation or some people say well we will go by the nearest country or some people say we will take night and day and split them in like sorry we'll take night till sunrise so M till sunrise sunset till sunrise and we'll just split it down the middle give the first half to M and is and the second half to F and that's why you get people in the UK opening closing their fast at something like 1:30 a.m.

which is very abnor normal for fud to have like the time from when fuder kicks in till sunrise is never above usually two hours like it's it's out of the ordinary to say well fuder has began and but Sunrise will be in 4 hours time or in 3 and a half hours time it's it's very it doesn't really happen like that but anyway so what we have now with that in mind we have some narrations from some of the people

like and some other S as well and also some of the like and and a few other people as well that that they would eat into sahur time like what I mean by sahur time as in Dawn time sorry sah is considered when you're eating uh before F so people would think well s what what does that mean but they would eat into fuder time like they would see that it was permissible to do that that the fast starts as long as you have closed the fast before sunrise and with enough time

to pray fud now that's that is unquestionably a fringe opinion it is an extremely minority opinion it did exist in the time of the sahaba because we have narrations where Hua they say he would come out and it was Dawn and and he would eat his and there's other narrations where he would say that we would eat uh it says we did with the prophet and it was Daylight he says except the sun hadn't risen yet and he says and then we got up and prayed

for and so we find that these narrations are there and in another narration he says that uh Hua says that we would eat after fud uh as in in fuder time and then he would get up and do read fa and people some of the would look at him like and some of the like what are you doing and he would say that that those people who went sorry this not the sah the would ask him and he said that those who went before you meaning the sahaba never used to consider by the word f in the Quran the fuder that you're refer meaning that

we're talking about fasting of course not praying fuder but uh he said that they would mean by fuder you stop eating when the light would fill the streets and your homes not the fuder just in the Horizon now that is a fringe opinion but considering the fact that the fast during the prophet's time and in that place the Arabian Peninsula which is close close to the equator have a really balanced equilibrium with night and day are almost equal in in a place like that where you

don't need to even go into fud time because the day is relatively short I mean it's not short short but it's not long either so in an environment like that for these sahaba and these tab to do things like that and chains that reach us with sah I mean these are I mean there are many chains that have been criticized but there are some that are have been accepted as uh with these Transmissions so I think okay if you have that Fringe opinion but then you add to it the

context of the days are not just equal they're massively unequal the inequality is so so Stark that you have 21 hours daylight and 3 hours do you see what I mean I mean it's so massive that W or 20 hours and 4 hours and then on top of that so you have the one the excessive daylight two you can't even tell when fud comes in nobody can tell everybody's estimating so we don't even have an as opposed to when these sahaba or these

they could tell when fud was coming in so we can't even tell so second uh uh you know part of the equation you can't even tell when fuder is kicking in thirdly the mus for people struggling and adding two hours to their time or one and a half hour or one hour even gives people enough energy enough time to actually make things to eliminate that strong level of inconvenience so I think putting all these things together so the fact that there is excessive daylight there is uh

lengthy daylight hours that there is an undeterminable fuder time that we cannot tell when it's fuder and thirdly there there's a strong inconvenience you put all these together and then you look at the welfare to remove this inconvenience and you have also a precedent with a sah chain from the sahab and some of the although it's a minority Fringe president but you have a precedent I think with these combinations these part you know

elements of the equation that come together it gives you an understanding okay why not take that position based on the welfare that you can delay day your as long as it's before Sunrise with enough time to pray your F uh and close the fast and I would personally I mean that's an understanding that um you know some have have taken it is a minority understanding but I believe to deal with our situation today I would say it is permissible if somebody practiced that I'm not saying they have to it is a minority position but I feel that if it

makes life practical for certain people then the dean is one of ease and as the Hadith inkari that the prophet Sall Alam was never faced with two choices except he chose the one with most ease okay people with that I hope it's of some help inshallah