Text of the post:
This clip promotes the health benefits of fasting three days each month to strengthen the body’s immune system and its ability to confront viruses and diseases. It supports this by citing recent studies said to have established it medically. The clip contains several claims and leading questions requiring reconsideration and comment. These include: did the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, overlook this medical fact? It claims that he called for renewing the immune system to keep the body strong, and asks: how did the Prophet know this fact, and why did he discuss medical facts discovered only now? It then concludes that these studies testify to the truth of Islam’s message.
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Important note:
Before commenting on these claims and questions, we must explain that whoever fasts with this intention and solely to obtain this purpose has an unacceptable and invalid fast. Shaykh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, may God have mercy on him, included in The Book of Monotheism the chapter “It Is a Form of Polytheism for a Person to Desire This World through His Deeds”, then cited God’s words: “Whoever desires worldly life and its adornment, We repay them fully for their deeds therein and they are not deprived. They are those who have nothing in the hereafter but the Fire. What they did therein comes to nothing, and their deeds are vain” [Hud: 15-16]. Commenting on this chapter in Al-Qawl al-Sadid: A Commentary on the Book of Monotheism, ministry edition, p. 147, Shaykh Abd al-Rahman al-Sa‘di, may God have mercy on him, said: “Know that sincerity to God is the foundation of religion and the spirit of monotheism and worship. It is that the servant intends by all his deeds God’s face, reward and bounty, fulfilling the six foundations of faith, the five prescriptions of Islam, the realities of faith that constitute excellence, God’s rights and His servants’ rights, completing them and intending through them God’s face and the hereafter, without seeking display, reputation, leadership or worldly gain. Through this, his faith and monotheism are completed. Among the greatest things opposing this are showing off before people, acting for their praise and admiration, or acting for worldly gain. This impairs sincerity and monotheism.” He also said: “As for acting for this world and obtaining its aims: if the servant’s entire intention is directed to this purpose, without any intention for God’s face and the hereafter, he has no share in the hereafter. Action of this description does not issue from a believer, for even a weak believer must intend God and the hereafter.”
Comment:
1. His question: did the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, overlook these facts?
I say: this is wordplay! Beginning the question with “did he overlook” startles the reader into saying: God forbid that the Prophet should be heedless when he is the foremost of those who remember God. The answer is then made to be: the Prophet did not overlook this fact! The correct point, however, is that the Prophet was not sent primarily to establish medical facts. He was sent to guide people to their Lord, bringing them from the darkness of polytheism into the light of monotheism, teaching and educating them, witnessing to God’s oneness, giving them glad tidings of Paradise and warning them against punishment. God says: “A messenger reciting to you God’s clear verses, to bring those who believe and do righteous deeds out of darkness into light” [al-Talaq: 11]; “O Prophet, We have sent you as a witness, a bearer of good news and a warner, and as one calling to God by His permission and as a luminous lamp” [al-Ahzab: 45-46]; and “It is He who sent among the unlettered a messenger from themselves, reciting His verses to them, purifying them and teaching them the Book and wisdom, although before they were in manifest error” [al-Jumu‘ah: 2]. It is authentically reported that he said: “You know better the affairs of your worldly life.” If acts of worship contain some health benefits, it does not follow that the Prophet knew them, because worship was not prescribed primarily for this purpose. Its primary religious purpose is worship, humility before God, reverence, love and submission to Him.
2. His certainty that the Prophet called for renewing the immune system through fasting three days each month is an unproven claim, mere speculation and conjecture. God says: “Say: produce your proof if you are truthful” [al-Baqarah: 111]. Such a claim arises only from the approach of those advocating the utilitarian interpretation of religion. They rush to certainty about the Prophet’s utilitarian intention whenever a distant mirage appears in a study indicating a worldly benefit of worship. This is because of their weak knowledge of the realities of faith in understanding, practice and foundations. They magnify these benefits at the expense of the fundamental objective of worship and assert that religious law intended them.
3. As for his questions about how the Prophet knew this fact and why it was discovered only now, he claims, may God guide him, that this testifies to Islam’s truth. Apart from its other defects, this explicitly attributes ignorance to the community’s scholars from Islam’s earliest days until now, as though they had not understood the Prophet’s intention in encouraging fasting three days each month, while in our age these studies have revealed his intention! Merely understanding this statement is enough to reject it and expose its speaker’s foolishness. How much more so when we understand the reality of religion’s call and the true purpose of worship: everything we know of worship’s material health benefits or other benefits, if valid, indicates God’s favour and mercy towards His servants. None is the fundamental purpose of worship, as already established. God knows best.
For more, see:
– The Major Objectives of Fasting.
– Refuting the Utilitarian Interpretation of Fasting.