IN THE NAME OF ALLAH, THE BENEFICENT, THE MERCIFUL
BEING THE SECOND KHUTBAH FOR THE MONTH OF RAMADAN
9/RAMADAN /1444AH (31 /MARCH/2023CE)
THE RULINGS OF FASTING AND DUTIES IN THE MONTH OF RAMADHAN
FIRST SERMON
All Praises belong to Allah, Lord of the Worlds. O Lord! Make this month a witness for us and not against us. Accept our fasting, our standing, our bowing and our prostration in it. Give us relieve from all distresses and forgive our sins and conceal faults. O Forgiver of sins! Have mercy on us, honor us, elevate us and do not lower us. I bear witness that there is no god worthy of worship but Allah. When Ramadhan arrives, a caller calls out from Allah, Blessed and Exalted be He, and says, O you who seek good, rejoice, (come near), O seeker of evil, stop short! O Allah! Give us glad tidings and give us good tidings of what is in the month, including the forgiveness, mercy, and emancipation from Hell. I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger, the one trusted with His Revelation, the one y whom the religion was completed for us, and His Blessings upon us was perfected, and by whom Allah was pleased with Islaam as a religion for us. He said in his noble hadith: “O people, a great month has come upon you, a blessed month, a month in which there is a night that is better than a thousand month, a month which Allah has made fasting in it obligatory and standing to pray in its night a recommended super-rogatory worship…”. (Ibn Khuzaymah). O Alla! May your blessings and peace be upon him and all his family and companions.
Thereafter…
Servants of Allah! Dear listeners! You should go and know – may Allah Ta’alaa have mercy on you – that the greatness of the reward from work is according to the greatness of the time and place of the work, and there is no time in the whole year in which the reward is greater for the believer, than the month of Ramadhaan, and sinning is not abhorred more at any time than in a month in which it is hoped for people to abandon sins and flee in repentance to Allah, the Oft-Forgiving, the Most Merciful. He was the One Who says in His Protected Revelation: “Say: Work, and Allah will see your work and His Messenger and the believers, and you will be returned to the Knower of the Unseen and the Seen, and He will inform you of what you used to do” (At-Tawbah: 105). “…and in this let the competitors compete” (Al-Mutaffifeen: 26). So based on this, our topic today, inshaa Allah will be: Some of the rulings of the month of Ramadhaan.
Definition of the Fasting
The understanding of fasting linguistically that it is restraint. And the understanding according to the Sharee’ah: it is abstaining from the desires of the stomach and the private parts from dawn to sunset with the intention of drawing closer to Allah, Blessed and Exalted He is.
Ruling of Fasting of Ramadhaan
In the fiqh of fasting, it is obligatory for an adult Muslim who is of sound mind, and fully resident (not travelling). It is forbidden for menstruating women and postpartum women, and it is not tecommended for the traveler if fasting weakens him, and it is desirable (but not obligatory) for small immature children. Maturity comes with the occurrence of one of three things in the case of the male: fully reaching fifteen years of age, pubic region development, and ejaculation of semen with desire. And for the female, there are four things: the three above and a fourth, which is menstruation. So, if she menstruates even at ten years, then she has matured.
Its Ruling: It is one of the pillars of Islaam, as it is one of the established obligations with well known certainty, known as part of the religion by necessity, and therefore all the scholars of the Ummah judge and regard as an unbeliever and an apostate anyone who denies the obligation of fasting in Ramadan, or doubts it, or belittles it. They excuse the new revert to Islaam who is unaware of the obligation.
Fasting and Sound Mind
In the fiqh of fasting, a person of unsound mind does not have to fast. Because the speech of the Lawgiver is directed to the sound minded person, and whoever has intermittent unsound mind must fast only during the period in which his mind returns to him.
If someone faints or is in a coma, or lives under artificial life-support, or loses his mind through anesthesia, like patients who undergo surgery, then the majority of scholars require them to make up what they missed from Ramadhaan at a time when their sound mind was absent. Because at that time they were not accountable, and Sheikh Al-Qaradawi took the middle ground, and he’s of the opinion that the long fainting person has no responsibility, and as for the short fainting that does not exceed two days, he does not remove the responsibility.
If old age reaches the point of dementia, then nothing is obligatory for him or his family, because the obligation is waived.
Menstruating and postpartum women
Menstruating women and postpartum women do not have to fast according to the fiqh of fasting. And if they purify themselves during the day in Ramadhaan, then it is desirable for them to stop eating at the time of purification, in observance of the sanctity of the month.
Fasting and travel
The Ummah unanimously agreed in the fiqh of fasting that the traveler has the right to break his fast, to the extent that the Sheikhul-Islaam mentioned that whoever denies this needs to repent, otherwise he will be accused of apostasy, because it is a well-known ruling in the religion by necessity, and some of the companions went to the obligation to break the fast while traveling, but the majority are of the view that it is permissible, not obligatory. Traveling in itself is a justification for breaking the fast, whether it is accompanied by fatigue and hardship or not.
Fasting and illness
Sickness in which fasting is a cause of aggravation, or a cause of delay in recovery, or a cause of hardship for its sufferer, is permitted in the fiqh of fasting to break his fast, provided that the person makes up for what he missed on other days, and it is sufficient what the sick person overly thinks will happen, provided that this is most likely. You know in two ways:
The first: the experience of the person himself, or the experience of someone who was ill with the same disease as him.
The second: asking a competent, trustworthy Muslim doctor, and Sheikh Ibn Al-Uthaymeen permitted asking a non-Muslim doctor if he was qualified and known for his honesty, and this is a great deal for Muslims in the West.
THE SECOND SERMON
Praise be to God, the Shaper of all affairs and destinies, and the one who folds the night into the day. We bear witness that there is no god but Allah, alone with He has no partner, He made the month of Ramadan a station for blessings and virtues. We bear witness that our Master Muhammad is His servant and Messenger.
These are some of the virtuous deeds that a Muslim should strive to do in these blessed days, and it is befitting for every servant to hit the target. This comes as a reminder, as the believer forgets and requires someone to remind him. It also comes as a form of advising and cooperating in righteousness and piety. We ask Allah the Almighty to help us and you to discharge it.
Among these duties are: –
1- Praying on time: It is known as a religious necessity that prayer is the pillar of the religion, and it is the first thing that a person will be held accountable for before his Lord, the Almighty, thus it should be the first thing we start with which we should pay attention to is to ensure the observance of prayers at the right time.
A Muslim must perform his prayer, and this is a foregone conclusion, but what is meant in this context of our discussion is to maintain the observance of prayer on time in congregation. The virtue and greatness of performing the prayer on time was indicated by the hadith of the Messenger of Allah (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) in the two Sahihs when Abdullah Ibn Mas’ud asked him: “Which deeds – or deeds – are most beloved to Allah? He said: “Prayer on time.” He said: Then which? He said: “Righteousness to one’s parents.” He said: Then what? He said: “Jihad in the cause of Allah.” Prayer at its right time is the opener to every good and a door to increase in worship and obedience especially in the month of closeness (to Allah)
2- Quran Recitation: Recitation of the Holy Quran is a great deed whether within or outside the month of Ramadan. We all know the well-known hadith about the reward attained by a Muslim when reciting the Qur’an in his saying (may God bless him and grant him peace): “Whoever reads a letter from the Book of Allah will have a good deed for it, and a good deed is multiplied by ten times. I do not mean that ‘Alif Lam Meem’ as a letter, but ‘Alif’ is a letter, ‘Lam’ a letter, and ‘Meem’ is a letter” This is the virtue of reciting it at all time, what is the thought of the Muslim regarding the virtue of reciting it in the month in which it was revealed and in the month of Allah in which the good deeds are multiplied and the times of worship are abundant and encouraged. The Prophet (PBUH) used to read the Qur’an a lot in the month of Ramadan and urges his companions to do so.
The righteous predecessors among the Companions, their followers, and their followers’ followers used to compete to finish it more than once in Ramadan, they study its verses and rulings, and gather in mosques to recite it and teach it, pursuant to what he (peace be upon him) said: “The best of you is he who learns the Qur’an and teaches it.”
Excessive recitation in Ramadan is the easiest way to worship by its verses daily, and to obtain a divine reward through all its aspects, by the honour of the holy month.
3- Night prayer: Night prayer is to keep awake at night in prayer and waking up at night to perform a Sunnah prayer that brings the servant closer to his Lord while people are asleep in the hope to earn Allah’s mercy and forgiveness. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) urged us to pray at night, especially in Ramadan, by saying: “Whoever prays in Ramadan out of faith and in anticipation of reward, his past sins will be forgiven.” And praying at night in Ramadan becomes easier than in other months. In Ramadan, mosques are decorated with Tarawih prayers; It is what helps the servant and encourages him to perpetuate the night prayer with the imam throughout the days of Ramadan.
And this task is not expect of you alone, it includes your family, Umar bn Al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him) used to pray part of the night as he wished, until it was midnight, he will wake his family for prayer, then he said to them: “the prayer … the prayer’ and would recite this verse” (وَامُرْ أَهْلَكَ بِالصَّلاَةِ وَاصْطَبِرْ عَلَيْهَا لَا نَسْأَلُكَ رِزْقا نَحْنُ نَرْزُقُكَ وَالعَاقِبَةُ لِلْتَّقْوَى) “And command your family to pray and be patient on it. We do not ask you for sustenance, We provide for you, and the end is for piety.”
4- Charity, feeding people and those fasting in breaking the fast: Among the acts of righteousness is giving charity which includes feeding fasting persons, giving financial aid to those in debts, or sponsoring destitute families. How beautiful it is that a Muslim take up to support a poor family, buying what they would need in Ramadan for them, a lot of families go hungry while some of us are basking in various types of foods. Except that among its gratitude is that your weak brothers thank you in that. Some of the predecessors would not break their fast alone, but would rather search for those to break their fast with him among the poor ones, and that is for the reward that results from that good from the hadith on the most generous person – and he (pbuh) was the most generous in Ramadan – when he says: “He who provides a fasting person something with which to break his fast, will earn the same reward as the one who was observing the fast, without diminishing in any way the reward of the latter.”
”On the authority of Abu Saeed Al-Khudri, he also said about him: “Any believer who feeds a believer when he is hungry, Allah will feed him on the Day of Resurrection with fruits of paradise. And any believer who gives a thirsty believer to what to drink, Allah will give him to drink from the sealed nectar on the Day of Resurrection…” (Tirmidhi), following what was stated in the Holy Qur’an, explaining the reward for feeding for the sake of Allah: (“وَيُطْعِمُونَ الطّعَامَ عَلَى حُبِّهِ مِسْكِينا وَيَتِيمًا وَأَسِيرًا) “And they give food in spite of love for it to the poor, the orphan, and the captive.” (Al-Insan: 8)
So the reward came (“فَوَقَاهُمُ اللهُ شَرَّ ذَلِكَ اليَوْمِ وَلَقّاهُمْ نَضْرَةً وَسُرُورًا. وَجَزَاهُمْ بِمَا صَبَرُوا جَنَّةً وَحَرِيرًا”) “So Allah will protect them from the evil of that Day and give them radiance and happiness.” (Al-Insan: 11-12)
5- Supplication: Supplication is the expression of lack and humility to the Lord, the All-Powerful, the All-Powerful, who answers prayers, and asking for what is with Allah after acknowledging His power and the lack of what the servants have. This is one of the very important acts of worship that increases in importance during Ramadan.
And Allah has shown the importance of that worship and asking Him not asking someone by revealing the verses of supplication directly after the verses of fasting, by saying: (” وَإِذَا سَأَلَكَ عِبَادِي عَنِّي فَإِنِّي قَرِيبٌ أُجِيبُ دَعْوَةَ الدَّاعِ إِذَا دَعَانِ،فَلِيَسْتَجِيبُوا لِي وَلِيُؤْمِنُوا بِي لَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْشُدُونَ”)
Dear servants of Allah, a great calamity befell the Muslim Ummah yesterday Thursday at Idi-Omoh mosque in Ile-Ife where Oro worshippers attack Muslims preparing to observe tha Asr prayer, beating the muslims including the Imams who were injured and are now receiving treatment at the Obefemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital. This evil act must not go unpunished to avoid repraissal attack and religious strife.