Those who say that these practices invalidate the fast base their opinion on two points:

1. The report transmitted by Abu Dawud (142) and al-Tirmidhi (788) from Laqit ibn Sabirah, in which the Prophet ﷺ said, “Exaggerate in sniffing water into the nose, unless you are fasting.”

2. Analogy (qiyās). They liken these practices to eating and drinking on the ground that all of them reach the inner cavity. Eating and drinking nullify the fast because the substance reaches that cavity, and these practices likewise have the power to do so; therefore, anything that reaches the cavity, they claim, breaks the fast.

The reply is as follows:

First: There is no hadith—sound or weak, connected or broken—that establishes these practices as nullifiers of the fast.

Second: Any ruling the ummah truly needs must be set out by the Prophet ﷺ in general terms and then transmitted by the community. If such transmission is absent, it is known that the matter is not part of his religion. Although analogy is a valid proof, the legal rulings the ummah urgently requires are not left to analogy; they are spelled out by revealed texts.

Third: Textual evidence and consensus affirm that eating, drinking, sexual intercourse, and menstruation break the fast. Kohl, injections, medicines, drops, and the like are neither food nor drink; they are treatments that combat illness and repel germs—substances that destroy, not nourish. The legal rationale for breaking the fast is not simply the arrival of any material into the body, such that these practices should be grouped with food and drink that reach the cavity. Rather, the fast is broken by one of two things:

1. Food or drink reaching the stomach and supplying the body with nourishment, thereby fulfilling the functions of eating and drinking and producing a great deal of blood that courses through the veins and arteries—pathways in which Satan finds ample room, so he flows along with that blood, luring the children of Adam and whispering to them. Thus the determining