making up fasts

[sunni slave]

Assalamu 'Alaykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuhu

Maulana sahib,

Is there an easy way to calculate fasts one may have missed during their teen years so they could do them as nafli roza in the future. Apparently its impossible to tell how many fasts and Ramadhans this person has missed ? How would they go about remedying this in an easy fashion ?

P SHOAIB

[Imam]

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem

Assalamu 'Alaykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuhu,


Jazakallahumul Khayr wa ahsanil jaza' brother Shoaib for your question on fasting.


Let us make it clear that any fasts that one has missed during their teen years, shall be owed to Allah the Almighty, as 'fard' fasts, and not 'nafil'. 'Fard' means obligatory, and the fasts of Ramadhan are 'fard'. If one has missed them, he/she will be responsible for what they have missed, unless they make a 'qadha' of them. (This means to make up what they have missed.)


The best way to calculate these is to work out the age of puberty. Lets say fourteen. Once you have worked this out, then count the number of years that you have missed. This could be done by saying:


'Well, i started keeping my fasts on a regular basis, at the age of 21'. So 21 minus 14, will give you 7. This is the number of years you missed fasting. i.e. 7 years.


Then you must multiply the seven by thirty, as you have 30 days in a month of Ramadhan, on average. (Anything surplus to this will act as nafil, and will also carry reward).


The total number of days to be fasted will then be 210.
210 days will be the number of days that one has to fast, for missing 7 Ramadhans. Similar calculations may be made for other number of years.


Where the number of years is known, yet the days are not, then a whole month maybe more than sufficient, although if the number of days missed, is remembered, then you can add these days on at the end, to your total figure.


I hope that these calculations will help you in performing the 'qadha' of the Ramadhan fasts.



Wallahu A'lamu Biththawaab


M. Waseem Ashrafi