This clip presents several Western studies of fasting’s health benefits. It ends by claiming that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, anticipated the West and encouraged fasting six days of Shawwal after Ramadan because he knew the reality of fasting and its health benefits and had not overlooked them. Certain modern studies, it says, have confirmed the need to fast at least thirty-five days to avoid many diseases and health problems.
Comment:
1. The clip mentions only health benefits of fasting in general, without specifying the kind of fasting meant in these studies. Often it is not the fasting prescribed in our religion: abstaining from every kind of food and drink from dawn to sunset. Other kinds of fasting used to treat or prevent illnesses involve giving up certain foods but not others, or food but not drink, and so on. This kind has no connection at all with our fasting.
2. The abundance of studies on fasting’s health benefits that interest Western universities springs from their materialist view of life and worship, without regard for the meanings of faith or the supreme wisdom of creation, legislation, sending messengers and revealing scriptures. This serves their idea, or that of some of them, that messengers were wise men who came only to reform society and prescribe what benefited people in worldly life, as in the outlook of philosophers such as Ibn Sina, al-Farabi and others. Thus, among them you find no one who has embraced Islam because of these studies, although, as they claim, they have practised this fasting and benefited from it for many years.
3. Even if these studies are valid and correspond to the fasting prescribed in our religion, it does not follow that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, knew them, such that one could say he preceded the West in discovering them. He was not sent for this. Like the messengers before him, he was sent to command monotheism and worship: “We never sent a messenger before you without revealing to him: ‘There is no deity but Me, so worship Me’” (al-Anbiya’ 21:25). This is the purpose of creating humanity and sending the messengers, peace and blessings be upon them, and this is the correct interpretation of religion. Proponents of utilitarian interpretation, however, understand worship only by linking it to worldly interests. They have not grasped devotion to God, encompassing reverence, love and humility before Him. They immerse themselves in searching for worship’s material benefits, then claim without evidence or proof that the Prophet knew them.
4. Regarding the six days of Shawwal, this study discusses uninterrupted consecutive fasting for at least thirty-five days. First, we know that, according to the stronger position, the six days of Shawwal need not be consecutive. Second, breaking the fast on Eid is obligatory and fasting that day is invalid. Thus the study does not necessarily establish a miracle in the fasting encouraged by Islamic law, much less that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, anticipated the West in this.
5. The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, explained the merit of fasting six days of Shawwal after Ramadan: it is equivalent to fasting perpetually. This explains its merit, benefit and immense reward. He neither mentioned nor hinted at the benefits in the alleged study, although the occasion existed and nothing prevented him. Claiming that, when prescribing this fast, he anticipated the West’s knowledge of its health benefits and encouraged it for that reason is an unsupported assertion about him. It also distorts his call and the purpose for which he was sent and fasting prescribed: “You who believe, fasting has been prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you, so that you may become mindful of God” (al-Baqarah 2:183). God knows best.
For more, see:
People’s positions on the benefit and wisdom of worship
The major objectives of fasting
Refuting the utilitarian interpretation of fasting
The purpose of fasting, by Shaykh Ibn Uthaymin