Q. I could not fast during the last two years because I was pregnant first and then I was breast-feeding my child. On doctors’ advice, I felt that I should not fast. How should I compensate for non-fasting?
S.M. Ali
A. Women often find themselves in the situation where they are pregnant one year and breast-feeding the next year. If this carries on for a few years during the reproductive period in a woman’s life, it is likely she will not be able to fast for several years. If she is required to make up for all this in fasting, she will find herself with a very heavy load of compensation, that she may not be able to manage.
Since Islam is both practical and easy to implement, God has allowed women in such a situation to resort to the other method of compensation, which is to feed a poor person two meals for each day of non-fasting.
This means that the lady reader should make this sort of compensation, feeding a poor person for sixty days, or sixty poor persons for one day, or any combination of the two, provided always that for each day, she gives one poor person two meals of the average type her family gets in normal time.
