and vigor; fasting, however, weakens the worshipper and prevents him from carrying out these matters. When interests clash, the one that brings greater and more wide-ranging benefit to the overall welfare of the Muslim community is given precedence.
Al-Nawawī said: “The reason it is disliked to fast on Friday is that it is a day of supplication, remembrance, and worship; breaking the fast therefore helps one to engage in these acts. It is also the weekly festival to which Allah guided this ummah, while the Jews were misled into venerating Saturday and the Christians into venerating Sunday. Praise be to Allah for His favour and His guidance.”
He also said: “The ḥadīth contains an explicit prohibition against singling out the night of Friday for prayer apart from the other nights, and this is unanimously deemed disliked.”
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The two ḥadīths indicate that it is disliked to fast on Friday by itself and to devote its night exclusively to night prayer, lest people establish rites that Allah has not legislated. If a person happens to fast or pray on that day or night without intending to single them out, the prohibition does not apply.
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The same texts show that fasting becomes permissible and the dislike is removed in either of two situations:
a) Friday coincides with one’s regular fast—such as someone who fasts every other day and finds that his fasting day happens to be Friday.
b) One does not fast Friday alone but joins it to another day, by fasting either the day before or the day after.
In both cases the dislike disappears because Friday has not been singled out. -
Taken at face value, the two ḥadīths appear to forbid fasting, for a prohibition (nahy) normally denotes unlawfulness. Other sound proofs likewise command breaking the fast and ban fasting, such as the ḥadīth of Juwayriyah in al-Bukhārī. Nevertheless, the majority of scholars hold that the prohibition here conveys mere dislike, not absolute illegality, because it targets the act of singling Friday out for fasting or night prayer, not the acts of fasting and prayer themselves.
Perhaps the basis upon which the majority preferred deeming it merely disliked rather than forbidden is that, when they saw the allowance