Fasting in Islam: Ramadan, Rules and Voluntary Fasts

The hunger is not the difficult part. Anyone who has fasted a few Ramadans will tell you the body adjusts within about three days, and the thirst in the afternoon becomes routine. What is difficult is the temper at four o’clock, the meeting you handle badly, the way a month designed to make you better can quietly make you worse if you only give up food.

Fasting in Islam is the fourth pillar and the one with the sharpest before-and-after. This guide covers who fasts and who is exempt, what breaks a fast and what does not, the voluntary fasts outside Ramadan, and how to get through the month without wrecking your health or your character.

Table of contents

• What fasting in Islam requires
• Who fasts, and who is excused
• What breaks a fast, and what does not
• Ramadan beyond the fast
• Voluntary fasts through the year
• Fasting in Islam: health and getting through the day
• Frequently asked questions

What fasting in Islam requires

From true dawn until sunset: no food, no drink, no marital relations, and an intention made beforehand. The obligation is set out in Surah Al-Baqarah 2:183, which frames it as prescribed for earlier communities too, so that you may attain taqwa (readable at Quran.com).

That closing phrase is the whole design. Taqwa is God-consciousness, and the mechanism is simple enough to be almost crude: you abstain from things that are ordinarily permitted, in private, where nobody can verify you. A person alone in a kitchen at two in the afternoon is the entire point of the exercise.

Which is why the narration warning that whoever does not abandon false speech and acting on it has given Allah no need of his abandoning food and drink, recorded by Bukhari, is not a footnote. Fasting in Islam that leaves the temper and the tongue untouched has missed what it was for. The full rules are set out in our guide to the rules of fasting.

Who fasts, and who is excused

Fasting in Islam is obligatory on every adult Muslim who is sane and able. The exemptions are not loopholes and taking one is not a failure of piety.

• Illness and travel. The days are made up later. The Quran states this directly in the same passage that establishes the obligation.
• Menstruation and postnatal bleeding. Fasting is not performed and the days are made up afterwards. Unlike the prayer, which is not made up.
• Pregnancy and breastfeeding. A genuine area of scholarly difference. Some hold the days are made up; some hold a feeding expiation is paid instead; some hold both, depending on whether the concern was for the mother, the child, or both.
• Chronic illness and old age, where fasting will not become possible later. Here the ruling is fidyah, feeding a poor person for each missed day, rather than making up.
• Children before puberty, who are encouraged gradually rather than obliged.

Two practical notes. Diabetes, pregnancy and medication schedules need a doctor and a scholar together, not one or the other. And a person who is genuinely exempt and fasts anyway, causing themselves harm, has not earned extra reward; the concession was the ruling.

What breaks a fast in Islam, and what does not

Fasting in Islam is broken by deliberately eating or drinking, deliberately vomiting, marital relations, and menstruation beginning. That is the core list, and it is shorter than most people assume.

What does not break it causes more anxiety than it should: forgetting and eating, which the narrations treat as a provision from Allah with the fast continuing; unintentional vomiting; brushing your teeth; swallowing saliva; a blood test; a shower; or tasting food on the tongue without swallowing.

Injections, inhalers and eye drops are areas where contemporary scholars have reached different conclusions, generally turning on whether the substance is nutritional and whether it reaches the stomach. Somebody with asthma should ask rather than guess, and should not abandon an inhaler over an unresolved question.

The errors people repeat every year are collected in common fasting mistakes.

Ramadan beyond the fast

Fasting in Islam during Ramadan carries more than the daylight abstention, and the parts people remember years later are usually the other parts.

Suhoor and iftar are worship rather than logistics. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم described blessing in the pre-dawn meal and encouraged hastening the breaking of the fast at sunset. Our guide to the Sunnah of suhoor and iftar covers both.

Taraweeh fills the nights, and there is a long-standing difference over the number of units, with eight and twenty both well established in practice. Neither position is an innovation and neither community needs correcting. See Taraweeh prayers. The Masjid Directory will find you a mosque and its Taraweeh timing.

The Quran has a particular relationship with this month, since it was revealed in it. Many aim to complete a full recitation; a slower reading with understanding is worth more than a rushed one for the certificate. Daily Quran is built for that pace.

The last ten nights carry Laylat al-Qadr, described as better than a thousand months. The night is not specified, which is generally read as an invitation to seek it across all ten rather than to turn up on the twenty-seventh.

For a fuller orientation to the month, see our introduction to Ramadan, and for what the fast earns, the rewards of fasting.

Voluntary fasts through the year

Ramadan is the obligation. The voluntary fasts are where fasting in Islam becomes a habit rather than an annual event, and people who keep them find the next Ramadan considerably easier.

• Mondays and Thursdays, a regular practice of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم.
• The white days, the 13th, 14th and 15th of each lunar month.
• Ashura, the 10th of Muharram, with the 9th recommended alongside it.
• Arafat, the 9th of Dhul Hijjah, for those not on Hajj. See our Hajj and Umrah guide.
• Six days of Shawwal, after Ramadan, described in a narration as completing the reward of a year when joined to it.

Details and the reasoning behind each are in the guide to voluntary fasts.

Fasting in Islam: health and getting through the day

Most of the suffering people report during fasting in Islam is self-inflicted and fixable.

Caffeine is usually the real culprit behind the afternoon headache. Tapering in the fortnight before Ramadan removes most of it.

Hydration happens between sunset and dawn, spread out rather than in two large amounts. A litre swallowed at iftar mostly leaves again.

Suhoor is not optional in practice. Skipping it to sleep is the single most common reason people struggle. Protein and slow carbohydrates hold; sugar does not.

Iftar is where the month is lost. Breaking a fast with a plate that would defeat you on an ordinary day undoes the physical benefit entirely, and a good number of people finish Ramadan heavier than they started.

More in staying healthy while fasting. Prayer and meal timings both hinge on dawn and sunset, which move daily: Prayer Times has today’s for your location.

Frequently asked questions

Does swallowing saliva or toothpaste break the fast?

Saliva does not break fasting in Islam. Toothpaste does not break it either provided none is swallowed, though many prefer a miswak during daylight hours to remove the question.

What if I ate or drank by mistake?

Your fast continues; fasting in Islam is not invalidated by genuine forgetfulness. A narration describes this as food and drink provided by Allah, with no expiation required. Stop as soon as you remember.

Can I fast if I have to take medication?

It depends on the form and the timing, and it is a medical question before it is a fiqh one. Many treatments can be rescheduled to the night; some cannot, in which case the illness exemption applies.

How do I make up missed days?

Missed days of fasting in Islam are made up any time before the next Ramadan, consecutively or not. Delaying without excuse until the next Ramadan is discouraged, and some scholars attach an expiation to it.

What if the days are extremely long where I live?

At high latitudes scholars have offered different solutions, including following the timings of Makkah or of the nearest moderate country. This is a recognised difficulty with recognised answers; ask a scholar familiar with your region.

Every guide on fasting in Islam

The rules: Rules of fasting · Common mistakes · Voluntary fasts

Ramadan: Introduction to Ramadan · Suhoor and iftar · Taraweeh prayers · Rewards of fasting

Practical: Staying healthy while fasting

During the month: Prayer Times for suhoor and iftar, the Masjid Directory for Taraweeh, Daily Quran for recitation, and the Halal Business Directory when iftar is not at home.