“this”—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—was meant to direct the ummah to what serves their interests and to confine them to what they can practice consistently, for the deeds Allah loves most are those done with constancy. It is also a warning against over-complication and extremism in worship, for the Almighty says, “But monasticism—they invented it; We did not prescribe it for them” ⦗57:27⦘, and the Prophet ﷺ said, “There is no monasticism in Islam.”

The Shaykh added: A person’s own self has a right to be treated with kindness.

The scholars therefore stipulated that the virtue of fasting one day and breaking the fast the next applies only if fasting does not weaken one to the point of neglecting something superior, whether obligatory or recommended.

Benefit: Our school holds that it is disliked to single out the month of Rajab for fasting, for that would revive the symbols of the pre-Islamic age of ignorance. The Shaykh said: Every report circulated about the merit of fasting in Rajab, or of performing special prayers in it, is—by unanimous agreement of the hadith scholars—spurious.