How Do I Distribute the Expiation (Kaffara) for Broken Oaths by Feeding the Poor?
Shafi'i Fiqh
Answered by Shaykh Irshaad Sedick
Question
In the past, I made oaths in which I set my own penalty, like saying, “if I do such and such, I will give away two hundred rand,” without realizing that there is a specific expiation (kaffara) for a broken oath. I carried out these self-imposed penalties for about ten oaths in total.
Recently, I learned that my own conditions were not valid and that I need to redo the expiations by feeding ten poor people a mudd of staple food each. I have not been able to find a charity to help with this, so I want to buy and distribute rice myself, but I am unsure about the details. I read that a mudd is 775ml, and with rice at 0.8 kg per liter, that would be about 62 kg for all 100 portions. Is this correct? Do I need to give it to a hundred different people? Do they have to be Muslim? And what exactly does “poor” mean?
Answer
In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful and Compassionate.
The expiation for each broken oath in the Shafi‘i school is to give ten poor or short of money Muslims one mudd of the local staple food each, the mudd being roughly three-quarters of a litre, so rice that you buy and hand over yourself is fully valid, and you need no organization to do it. For ten broken oaths you owe ten such expiations, but the same ten poor people may receive across all of them, so you do not need a hundred different recipients, and your own estimate of around sixty kilograms of rice is essentially correct. Before you treat yourself as being in arrears at all, however, please read the note near the end, because depending on how you actually worded those oaths, your earlier giving may already have discharged them.
What a Mudd Is, and the Weight
A mudd is a dry measure equal to an average cupped double handful. Because it is a volume taken from the hands rather than a fixed metric weight, it has been rendered into modern units in two ways.
Some manuals back-calculate it from the classical coin and ratl weights and arrive at a lower figure of about half a litre, which is the conversion printed in a number of Shafi’i references [Misri, ‘Umdat al-Salik]
Others measure the prophetic mud directly by volume and settle on roughly three-quarters of a litres, around 750 to 775 millilitres, which is the determination a body of contemporary Shafi‘i authorities has adopted. Both are sound, and we are following the volume-based measure here.
It is also the figure you arrived at, so your calculation holds. At a rice density of roughly 0.8 kilograms per litre, one mudd comes to about six hundred grams, every single expedition of ten people to about six kilograms, and your ten expeditions to roughly sixty kilograms of rice in total. Your own figure of sixty-two falls within this and is perfectly fine. You need not be exact to the gram, and erring slightly on the generous side only does you good.
Whether One Hundred Separate Recipients Are Required
The number ten is integral to every single expiation, so within one expiation, the food must reach ten different poor people, and you cannot give two portions to one person and count them as two. [Misri, ‘Umdat al-Salik]
But each broken oath is its own separate expiation, and nothing prevents the same poor person from receiving in more than one of them. So for your ten oaths, you may give to the very same ten poor Muslims across all ten, each of them receiving one mudd per expiation, about ten mudds, or roughly six kilograms of rice each, in total. You are free to use more people if that is easier, but you are not required to find a hundred separate recipients. Ten suffice.
Whether the Recipients Must Be Muslim
Yes. In the Shafi‘i school, the recipients of this expiation must be poor or short of money Muslims, just as the recipients of zakat must be Muslims. [Misri, ‘Umdat al-Salik]
A non-Muslim, however needy, does not fulfill this particular obligation, though giving him general charity remains good in its own right.
What “Poor” Means
The eligible recipient is either a faqir, a poor person, or a miskin, one short of money. A faqir is someone who does not have enough to meet his basic needs, possessing less than half of what he needs and unable to earn a living that befits him; a miskin is someone who has more than half but still not the whole of his needs. [Misri, ‘Umdat al-Salik]
A simple practical sign is that the person does not possess wealth, surplus to his needs and debts, that reaches the zakat threshold. You do not need to interrogate anyone or verify their poverty forensically. A sound assumption based on what you reasonably know of the person is enough, and you should not let this become a source of worry.
How to Carry It Out
Your plan is exactly right for our school. The Shafi’i expiation by food is fulfilled by transferring ownership of the raw staple, not by serving a cooked meal, so buying rice and handing each poor Muslim his mudd is precisely what is called for, and rice is a valid staple.
Make the intention (niyya) that this is your oath expiation as you give it. You may give it all at once or spread it out over time to one gathering of ten or more, and you may do it yourself or appoint someone you trust to distribute on your behalf. The same method applies to any oath you break in the future.
A Point to Settle Before Counting Any Backlog
From the way you describe these, “if I do such and such, I will give away two hundred rand,” it is quite possible that what you made were not bare oaths sworn in Allah’s name but vows of the kind a person makes to restrain himself, of the form “if I do such and such, I am obliged to give such and such.” In the Shafi’i school, that construction gives you a choice between fulfilling the pledge or paying the oath expiation. [Misri, ‘Umdat al-Salik]
If that is what these were, then by actually giving the two hundred rand each time, you may well have already discharged the obligation, and nothing further would be owed. Whether your wording rose to a vow of this kind, an oath sworn in Allah’s name, or merely a private resolution, depends on exactly what you said and intended. So rather than assuming a backlog of a hundred portions, it is worth first establishing, for your own peace of mind, whether anything is in fact still owed. Either way, the method above is what you would use for any expiation that genuinely remains.
Do not let this become a burden for you. The Prophetic example is to avoid making oaths. If you want to motivate yourself toward something, keep it as a personal goal without swearing by Allah or making it a vow, so that no expiation is needed if you do not follow through.
And Allah (Most High) knows best.
[Shaykh] Irshaad Sedick
Checked and Approved by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani
Related Answers
- Do I Need to Pay Kaffara for Each Broken Oath? (Hanafi)
- Have I Broken My Oath? (Hanafi)
- What Is the Expiation for Breaking an Oath? (Hanafi)
- What Is the Expiation (Kaffara) of Breaking an Oath?
- How Do I Expiate for an Oath I Broke Multiple Times?
Shaykh Irshaad Sedick was raised in South Africa in a traditional Muslim family. He graduated from Dar al-Ulum al-Arabiyyah al-Islamiyyah in Strand, Western Cape, under the guidance of the late world-renowned scholar Shaykh Taha Karaan (Allah have mercy on him), who taught there.
Shaykh Irshaad received Ijaza from many luminaries of the Islamic world, including Shaykh Taha Karaan, Shaykh Muhammad Awama, Shaykh Muhammad Hasan Hitu, and Mawlana Abdul Hafeez Makki, among others.
He is the author of the text “The Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal: A Hujjah or not?” He has been the Director of the Discover Islam Center and, for 6 years, the Khatib of Masjid Ar-Rashideen in Mowbray, Cape Town.
Shaykh Irshaad has 15 years of teaching experience at some of Cape Town’s leading Islamic institutes. He is currently building an Islamic podcast, education, and media platform called ‘Isnad Academy’ and has completed his Master’s degree in the study of Islam at the University of Johannesburg. He has a keen interest in healthy Prophetic living and fitness.
