Do Blessings on the Prophet Sent Right After an Oath Fall Inside the Oath?

Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

Question

I swore an oath to keep away from a sin for a set period and then said, in Arabic, ‘and may Allah bless our master Muhammad,’ and I now fear that the word ‘and’ pulled those blessings inside the oath.

Answer

In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate.

I can hear how heavily this has been sitting on you, and your own instinct about it is right. The blessings on the Prophet (salawat) that you sent are not part of your oath. Nothing you swore keeps you from sending blessings upon the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), and you should go on sending them freely.

An oath, in the Hanafi school, is defined as ‘… a contract by which the resolve of the one swearing is strengthened, upon doing or leaving something … and its pillar is the wording by which the oath is contracted.’ [Babarti, al-Inaya 5:59 (1)] Hold your own words against that. You bound yourself to leave a sin for a set period, and that is the whole of what you contracted. What you said next asked Allah to bless His Messenger. It binds you to no doing and to no leaving, so there is nothing in it for an oath to fasten upon.

Nor does the conjunction do the work you fear. Oaths are read here by what the words carry in ordinary usage, ‘because oaths are built upon customary usage … because an oath is contracted only to compel or to prevent.’ [Mulla Khusraw, Durar al-Hukkam 2:40] A Muslim closes what he says by asking blessings upon the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), and that is what your ‘and’ carried: a supplication, not a second undertaking. Your oath was over the sin, and it stayed there.

What is left in you is a fear rather than a fact, and the law does not act upon fears. Majallat al-Ahkam al-Adliyya, the Ottoman civil code that set down Hanafi rulings as numbered articles, states this in Article 74: ‘No weight is given to mere supposition.’ [Majallat al-Ahkam al-Adliyya 1:25]

So leave the wording alone. Replaying the moment is the whispering (waswasa) at work rather than fiqh, and every pass feeds it. When the thought comes that your blessings broke your oath, do not argue with it: send blessings upon the Prophet again, deliberately, and get on with your day.

Keep the Oath, and Keep Sending Blessings

Your oath itself stands, and it is worth keeping: what you swore over is turning away from a sin. Hold to it one day at a time. Know the rest of the rule as well, so it does not catch you by surprise later. The ruling of an oath is ‘fulfilment in that wherein fulfilment is obligatory, and expiation when that is missed.’ [Babarti, al-Inaya 5:59 (2)] If you do break this oath, two things fall due and they are separate: repentance for the sin, and the expiation of an oath (kaffarat al-yamin), which Allah Most High sets out in Sura al-Maida, verse 89, as feeding ten needy people, or clothing them, or freeing a slave, and three days of fasting for one who finds no means to do any of these. That is what breaking an oath obliges, and it has nothing to do with the blessings you sent, for which nothing at all is owed.

Then take those blessings as your help rather than your worry. Teaching his Companions to answer the call to prayer, the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, ‘… then send blessings upon me, for whoever sends a single blessing upon me, Allah sends ten blessings upon him …’ [Muslim] A man asking Allah’s blessings upon His Beloved through the whole of his day is not a man losing ground.

And Allah knows best.

Faraz Rabbani

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