If it is asked: What is the difference between the two views? The answer is that this becomes clear through an example. If a person begins these two months on the first night on which the new month is established—let us say that it is the month of Jumada al-Awwal—then he begins fasting on its first day and completes it on the last day of Jumada al-Akhirah. Suppose that Jumada al-Awwal has twenty-nine days, and likewise Jumada al-Akhirah; his fast will then be fifty-eight days. There is no doubt that this is determined by the lunar crescent.

However, if he begins fasting in the middle of Jumada al-Awwal, then Jumada al-Akhirah is determined by the lunar crescent, because he will have witnessed both the beginning and the end of the month; thus, it is certainly determined by the lunar crescent.

As for the first partial month, which he began on the fifteenth of Jumada al-Awwal, he completes it as thirty days. Thus, according to the second view—which holds that a partial month is counted as thirty days—the final day of his fasting will be the fifteenth of Rajab. According to the preponderant view, however, which takes the lunar crescents as the criterion in all cases, the final day of his fasting will be the fourteenth of Rajab, if Jumada al-Awwal has twenty-nine days. Thus, if we assume that Jumada al-Awwal is incomplete, and Jumada al-Akhirah likewise, his fast will amount to fifty-eight days.

His statement, “consecutive”: that is, they must follow one another, such that he does not break the fast for even one day between them, except for a legally recognized excuse, such as menstruation and postnatal bleeding in the case of a woman; or the two Eid days and the Days of Tashriq; or a physical excuse, such as illness or travel, for either a man or a woman—on condition that one does not travel for the purpose of breaking the fast. If one travels in order to break the fast, the continuity is interrupted.