Questioner: Shaikh, may Allaah reward you with all goodness, fasting on Saturday if it is the Day of ʿArafah?
Al-Albaani: We still haven’t finished talking about fasting on Saturday?
Lā ḥawla wa lā quwwata illā billāh.
Brothers, before answering the question I say directly: I advise my brothers who might have gained some knowledge not to have the audacity to make and issue rulings that are bigger than themselves, and that they should be from the people the Prophet ﷺ alluded to when he said, “Allaah gives understanding of the religion to whoever He wants goodness for.”
The ḥadīth which has been reported about fasting on Saturday with the wording, “Do not fast on Saturdays except for what has been made obligatory on you. If any one of you cannot find anything other than grape stalks or the twigs of a tree, let him chew it [to make sure that he is not fasting].” There are two aspects to this ḥadīth, one related to the science of ḥadīth and one to fiqh.
The science of ḥadīth aspect is whether it is authentic or not?
The fiqh aspect discusses what the ḥadīth indicates.
Many people might, especially students of knowledge, and specifically those who are amazed at themselves and who think they have reached a level where they can give fatwās of things being permissible or not, these people might have a partial excuse but not a total one for [discussing this issue and then] saying no, this ḥadīth doesn’t show that when the Day of ʿArafah or the Day of ʿĀshurā coincides with Saturday that it is not allowed to fast it. They have a partial excuse but [in reality] they have no excuse.
But they have no excuse whatsoever to talk about whether the ḥadīth is authentic or weak, because they have no way of knowing what an authentic or weak ḥadīth is.
Our discussion now is with our brothers, leaving aside others, who do believe in the authenticity of this ḥadīth. And if there is someone who has some acquaintance with the study of ḥadīth who says that no, this ḥadīth is inauthentic, it is then that we could open a new page and study it in the light of the principles of the science of ḥadīth, so as to ascertain whether my stance that the ḥadīth is authentic and theirs that it is weak, is correct.
As for when the discussion is centred around the fact that this ḥadīth is authentic—and it is, there being no doubt or uncertainty about that—then explaining their mistake and everyone else’s whether they are blind-followers or are people who follow [the Book and the Sunnah] like our Salafī brothers or others becomes easier. It is easy for us to make them understand that this ḥadīth is an unequivocal text that does not accept interpretation about the fact that when the Day of ʿĀshurā or the Day of ʿArafah coincide with Saturday it is not allowed to fast it.
And here is the answer in detail.
You just heard the ḥadīth now that after the Prophet ﷺ forbade fasting on Saturday he exempted [a certain type of fast from it], saying, “… except for what has been made obligatory on you,” and so [based on this] we have the prohibition of fasting on Saturday.
Yaʿnī, the summary of the entire ḥadīth is that the Prophet ﷺ forbade fasting on Saturday except for obligatory fasts.
So if, as we hear, someone were to say, no, except for ʿĀshurā, and another one says, except for ʿArafah … except for the White Days, Allāhu Akbar—I can’t imagine a Muslim who knows and is aware of what is coming out of his mouth would have the audacity to say such a thing.
Allaah’s Messenger ﷺ says, “Do not fast on Saturdays except for what has been made obligatory on you,” and he says, “Except for this and that, and such and such and this and that,” isn’t he correcting what Allaah’s Messenger ﷺ said? Doesn’t that mean, God forbid, that the person making this ‘correction’ and that other one and the third and fourth—that what they are saying is that the Prophet ﷺ doesn’t know how to talk?
Questioner: That he isn’t clear [faṣīḥ: clear/eloquent/well-spoken in Arabic].
Al-Albaani: That he isn’t clear, that he doesn’t know how to talk, because he ﷺ made a general prohibition and exempted one thing from it, and he should have come with a statement that would include all of these other types and exemptions that these people talk about.
Imagine an intellectual student of knowledge who is free from desires, him just picturing this [in his head] is enough for him to say: I repent to Allaah and turn back to Him and leave what I used to say and the Prophet ﷺ spoke the truth when he said, “Do not fast on Saturdays except for what has been made obligatory on you.”
After making this clarification we come across this in another form … you will see these ardent enthusiasts of these three exceptions [ʿArafah, ʿĀshūrā and the White Days [the White Days are the three days, the 13th, 14th and 15th we are encouraged to fast every hijri month]] … I’ll rephrase that and say: these people who correct Allaah’s Messenger ﷺ, they will [also be forced to] retract another issue, we say to them: when ʿEed coincides with Saturday, do you fast it? The day of sacrifice and the three days after it … it has to have coincided with Monday, for example, over the years.
Questioner: Monday.
Al-Albaani: Monday.
Questioner: Or Thursday.
Al-Albaani: Or Thursday, they would’ve coincided, no doubt.
Do we fast Mondays when it coincides with the day of ʿEed? The unanimous answer will be no.
So we ask them why?
They will tell you because it’s forbidden. So what is the difference between fasting on Saturday [then] which is prohibited and fasting one of the days of ʿEed when it coincides with Monday—and it is recommended to fast on Mondays and Thursdays—but when that day coincided with something that prevents fasting it … when that [recommendation] coincided with a day that has been forbidden to fast, what then was the stance of the scholars? They made the forbiddance overpower the permissibility, saying, we do not fast on [either] Monday or Thursday because it has coincided with the day of ʿEed and it is forbidden to fast on ʿEed.
There is no difference whatsoever between the Prophet’s ﷺ forbiddance of fasting on Saturdays and that of fasting on the four days of ʿEed.
So what is the principle that these people who correct the Prophet ﷺ have turned to, saying that it is permissible to fast on Saturday if it coincides with a day of excellence, like ʿArafah for example? What do they say about fasting Mondays or Thursdays [if they coincide with ʿEed] when they are days that it is has been encouraged to fast on?
If these people are fuqahā, they will answer with what the scholars of uṣūl said, they will say: when a prohibition contradicts something permissible the prohibition is given precedence: the days of ʿEed are forbidden to fast, Mondays and Thursdays are permissible and [further] encouraged to fast, [but] when something permissible goes against something that has been forbidden, the prohibition is given precedence over the permitted—[and this is] the same principle which we applied here to fasting on Saturdays.
Questioner: Even if he were fasting a day on and off [i.e., the fast of Dāwūd], he breaks his fast and eats?
Al-Albaani: Same thing, akhī.
Questioner: Same thing.
Al-Albaani: Same thing, yaʿnī, like Ibn Ḥazm, Allaah have mercy on him, said that this is an extra ruling the Legislator sent, we have to submit to it, the principle is the same: [the ruling that] it is forbidden to fast on Saturdays and on the days of ʿEed is given precedence over the permissibility.
And in conclusion I want to say something.
Many people mistakenly think that when ʿĀshurā or one of the virtuous days of ʿEed happens to fall on a Saturday and they don’t fast it because it’s Saturday that they will then have missed out on a huge amount of goodness: fasting ʿĀshurā expiates the sins of the past year and fasting ʿArafah those of the past and coming year—how can we miss out on this virtue?
The answer, if only they knew, is in the Prophet’s ﷺ statement, “Whoever leaves something for Allaah, Allaah will replace it with something better.” Why didn’t we fast on Saturday? [Was it] because we didn’t want to fast on ʿArafah or ʿĀshurā or any of the virtuous days of fasting like the three days of the month? No it wasn’t. It was out of obedience to Allaah and His Messenger ﷺ.
Thus, the ḥadīth, “Whoever leaves something for Allaah …,” applies to us, the “something” mentioned here is like the “something/anything [in Arabic it’s the same word: شيء]” mentioned in the āyah, “Should you disagree on anything, then refer it to Allaah and His Messenger,” [4:59] whoever leaves something, whatever that [something] may be, [it applies to] any thing that you can leave.
We left fasting on Saturday even though it was the Day of ʿArafah—why? Because He forbade us from doing it on His Prophet’s tongue.
So we are better than those people who fast on the day of ʿĀshurā [when it coincides with Saturday]—inshā Allaah they are entitled to Allaah forgiving them the previous and coming years sins—according to the text of this ḥadīth we, inshā Allaah, are entitled to that, [since] we acted on two ḥadīths: one which mentions a virtuous act and another a prohibition. They acted on the ḥadīth mentioning the excellence of the virtuous act and turned away from the ḥadīth which mentions the prohibition.
This is a reminder, and reminders benefit the believers.
Al-Hudā wan-Nūr, 204.
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