Is it Better to Fast Mondays and Thursdays or The Fast of Dāwūd ﵇?
Questioner: Is fasting Mondays and Thursdays better or the Fast of Dāwūd ﵇ [which was one day on and one day off]?
Al-Albaani: What do you mean by better?
Questioner: Better, superior, which is better?
Al-Albaani: Of which two?
Questioner: Fasting Mondays and Thursdays or the Fast of Dāwūd?
Al-Albaani: The Fast of Dāwūd ﵇. Do you have some proof that fasting Mondays and Thursdays is better?
Questioner: No.
Al-Albaani: So it’s an invalid question since you don’t have a textual proof that fasting on Mondays and Thursdays is the best type of fasting, on the contrary there is proof of the opposite.
We came to the conclusion in our research that maybe we, the followers of Muhammad ﷺ, that our fast, when we do fast a day on and a day off, [that] while it is the Fast of Dāwūd ﵇, at the same time it may be better than [fasting] the Fast of Dāwūd ﵇, why?
Because it is possible that in Dāwūd’s sharīʿah ﵇ there was no prohibition against fasting the four days of ʿEed, in fact maybe he ﵇ never had anʿEed Aḍḥā and ʿEed Fiṭr, and may be there was no prohibition against fasting Jumuʿahs—we do [however] have such prohibitions.
So whoever does what he has been ordered with and refrains from what he has been forbidden from is better than someone who just does what he has been ordered to do.
Thus when we add to the mode of fasting a day on and a day off, which is the Fast of Dāwūd ﵇, [when we add] the days we are not permitted to fast, like Jumuʿah and Saturday, our fast will be better than if we were to fast a day on and a day off.
And if the on day happened to be a Friday and it was not preceded with a fast on the Thursday then this would not be better, i.e., [carrying out] the Fast on the madhhab of Dāwūd ﵇ [would not be better]—rather what is better is that we carry out the fast on the madhhab of Muḥammad ﷺ, which has an order [as to when to fast] and a prohibition [as to when not to].
So whatever we are ordered with we follow, and whatever we are forbidden from, we refrain from.
Al-Hudā wan-Nūr, 144.
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