eats so much that it causes him indigestion and illness. Prohibiting this while fasting is all the more emphatic, since it is prohibited even when one is not fasting, and fasting further reinforces the prohibition. This is like prohibiting unlawful sexual intercourse: if lawful intercourse is forbidden to him, then unlawful intercourse is forbidden all the more.

If it is said: But sexual intercourse invalidates the fast, even though this rationale does not apply to it?

The answer is: These rulings are established by explicit texts and scholarly consensus, so establishing them does not require analogy. Indeed, their underlying causes may differ: prohibiting food and drink and their invalidation of the fast may serve one wisdom; prohibiting intercourse and its invalidation of the fast may serve another; and the invalidation of the fast through menstruation may serve yet another. Menstruation itself cannot be described as prohibited. This is because the things established by explicit texts and scholarly consensus as invalidating the fast fall into two categories: voluntary acts that are prohibited to a person, such as eating and intercourse, and things beyond one’s control, such as menstrual bleeding. Their underlying causes likewise fall into different categories.

We therefore say: Insofar as intercourse causes the emission of semen, it is comparable to induced vomiting, menstruation, and cupping—as we shall explain, if Allah Most High wills. It involves evacuation, rather than taking things into the body, as eating and drinking do. Insofar as it satisfies one of the two appetites, however, it is comparable to eating and drinking. The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, related in an authentic hadith that Allah Most High said:

“Fasting is for Me, and I shall reward