How many days does a person have to fast if he cannot stand the heat while working in the field or at work and breaks his fast?

- Is qada (fasting for one day) or kaffarah (fasting for 61 days) necessary?

Dear Brother / Sister,

People who are worried that their illness will worsen or prolong when they fast or those who have difficulty in fasting due to their illness are allowed not to fast in Ramadan and to make up for it after they recover.

Essentially, it is not appropriate for a person to work or be employed in difficult and heavy work that will prevent him from performing his religious duties normally. It is absolutely unacceptable in terms of human rights to leave a person between the dilemma of performing his religious duties in a healthy way and making a living. A person who is left in such a situation might not fast if the society cannot provide him/her with better job opportunities and therefore it is certain or likely that he will have financial difficulties if he quits his job. A person who has to work at a heavy job temporarily might not fast if he is worried that fasting will harm his health. If they find the opportunity, they will fast later; if not, they can pay fidyah instead of fasting.

Illness, travel and inability to fast are mentioned as excuses that make it permissible not to fast in the Quran. (al-Baqara 2/184-185). Fiqh scholars have preferred to limit the permission to skip fasting to those three cases; they were hesitant to say that one might not fast in every case of difficulty even if the common feature of those three situations was difficulty. The primary reason for it is the concern that people might act excessively or negligently in determining the difficulty, which is a subjective and variable thing, and abandon fasting due to unnecessary excuses, that is, they might abuse this permission.

However, since fasting is a relationship of liability between the servant and Allah, it will be appropriate for believers to use their personal initiative in the light of the excuses listed above, not to abandon fasting if they are not fully satisfied with their excuses, and to benefit from the permission in question when they are fully convinced that they have a justified and valid excuse.

For example, if hunger and thirst become extreme and if it is feared that the person will die or lose his mental balance, ­it becomes permissible to break the fast. It becomes necessary to perform one day fasting at a convenient time after Ramadan.

Similarly, if a person who has to work on very hot days ­is worried about losing his health or mental balance, he can break his fast.

On the other hand, people who do very tiring and exhausting tasks and are worried about losing their lives or suffering from mental and spiritual instability while fasting in a hot season can also break their fast. (Fathul-Qadir - Kamal Ibn Humam; Celal Yıldırım, Kaynaklarıyla İslam Fıkhı, Uysal Kitabevi: 2/234)

In this respect, a person who breaks his fast due to illness must perform fasting one day for each day he has not fasted after the month of Ramadan.

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