Is It Permissible to Fast on Behalf of a Deceased Person?
Hanafi Fiqh
Answered by Shaykh Yusuf Weltch
Question
Is there a restriction on how many days one can fast a year if one has many fasts to make up?
Is it permissible to fast on behalf of a deceased person?
Answer
In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful and Compassionate
It is permissible to fast however often one feels excluding the following:
(1) It is prohibitively disliked to fast on either of the 2 days of ‘Eid and/or the 11th, 12th, and 13th of Dhu al-Hijja (i.e. the 3 days after ‘Eid al-Adha).
(2) It is prohibitively disliked to do a continuous fast (sawm al-wisal). This is to fast consecutive days without having an iftar (i.e. without breaking the fast).
Besides the above 2 circumstances one can fast as much as one wishes. Especially when make up fasts are due it is recommended to due them as soon as possible.
[Ibn ‘Abidin, Radd al-Muhtar, Shurunbulali, Maraqi al -Falah]
Fasting on Behalf of a Deceased Person
It is not permissible in the Hanafi school to fast on behalf of a deceased person. Rather the fasts owed by the deceased person can be expiated for by giving a poor person the expiatory charity amount for each day of fast missed.
The expiatory charity is the monetary equivalent of 2.2kg of wheat per fast.
Hope this helps
Allah knows best
[Shaykh] Yusuf Weltch
Checked and Approved by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani
Shaykh Yusuf Weltch is a teacher of Arabic, Islamic law, and spirituality. After accepting Islam in 2008, he completed four years at the Darul Uloom seminary in New York, where he studied Arabic and the traditional sciences. He then traveled to Tarim, Yemen, where he stayed for three years studying in Dar Al-Mustafa under some of the greatest scholars of our time, including Habib Umar Bin Hafiz, Habib Kadhim al-Saqqaf, and Shaykh Umar al-Khatib. In Tarim, Shaykh Yusuf completed the memorization of the Qur’an and studied beliefs, legal methodology, hadith methodology, Qur’anic exegesis, Islamic history, and several texts on spirituality. He joined the SeekersGuidance faculty in the summer of 2019.
