such as a patient who cannot do without water—certain types of diabetes, for example. For him, fasting is forbidden, for Allah says, “Do not kill yourselves; Allah is ever Merciful to you.”

3 – The third kind: an illness that makes fasting difficult but not harmful. In this case it is better to break the fast and make it up later. By contrast, a condition that fasting does not affect—like a minor eye irritation, a toothache, and the like—does not allow one to break the fast, because the purpose of the concession is to remove hardship, and here there is none at all. Therefore it is impermissible to miss the fast; the basic rule is that the fast must be observed in its proper time unless clear, unequivocal proof permits a person to break it and make it up later.

Travel is likewise divided into three categories. One of them is a journey in which fasting harms the traveler and subjects him to severe hardship—for instance, traveling on long, hot days while knowing that fasting would injure him and impose unbearable difficulty. If he nevertheless fasts, he is sinning. The evidence is that people once complained to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, while on a journey, that fasting was burdensome. He called for water and drank it in front of them so they would feel no unease about breaking the fast, and this was after ‘Asr. Yet some of the Companions remained fasting. When the Prophet ﷺ was told about them he said, “Those are the disobedient ones, those are the disobedient ones,” describing them as sinners because they would not accept the concession.