This view is the stronger one. Accordingly, if a traveller arrives in his hometown while not fasting and finds that his wife became pure from menstruation and performed the ritual purification during that day, he may have intercourse with her.

Likewise, if someone breaks his fast in order to rescue a drowning person, and rescues him, he is not required to abstain for the remainder of the day. If a nursing woman breaks her fast out of concern for her child, then the child dies during the day, she is not required to abstain for the rest of it.

According to this stronger view, the governing principle is that whoever breaks his fast in Ramadan due to an excuse that permits breaking the fast, and that excuse then ceases during the day, is not required to abstain for the remainder of that day.

His statement: “Whoever breaks the fast because of old age or an illness from which recovery is not expected must feed one needy person for each day.” His words, “because of old age,” use the preposition in the sense of causation—that is, on account of old age. When a person grows old, fasting becomes difficult for him, and old age is not expected to be remedied, since returning to youth is impossible: an elderly person cannot become young again. As the poet said:

Would that—but what good is “would that”?—
Youth were sold, that I might buy it.

Thus, if he breaks his fast because of old age, there is no hope of his regaining the ability to fast, and he must therefore offer expiation. The same applies to one who breaks his fast due to an illness from which recovery is not expected. Many scholars previously used tuberculosis as an example, saying that recovery from it was not expected. In the present time, however, this example no longer applies, since tuberculosis has become curable. Nowadays, cancer may be given as an example, for recovery from cancer is not expected. Thus, if a person falls ill with cancer,