FASTING NOT OBLIGATORY UNDER CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES
Under certain circumstances fasting was optional. For example, a fast during a journey could be broken. �Fast if you like and break it if you like,� Muhammad told a questioner on the subject (2488).
There is even a reward for not observing the fast if you are engaged in the �Way of Allah,� i.e., in the act of jihAd. �You are going to encounter the enemy in the morning and breaking of the fast would give you strength, so break the fast,� Muhammad tells the believers (2486).
Women sometimes abstained from fasts so that they could perform their duties to their husbands unhindered. �Aisha reports: �I had to complete some of the fasts of RamzAn, but I could not do it . . . due to my duties to the Messenger of Allah� (2549). �Aisha reports the same about Muhammad�s other wives. �If one amongst us had to break fasts [of RamzAn due to natural reasons, i.e., menses] during the fife of the Messenger of Allah, she could not find it possible to complete them so long as she had been in the presence of Allah�s Messenger till Sha�bAn [the eighth month] commenced� (2552). The translator explains that every wife of Muhammad was �so much devoted to him that she avoided fasting lest it should stand in her way in the performance of her duty as a wife to him� (note 1546).
It was not only from devotion but also because of Muhammad�s injunction that the wives did not fast. �No woman should observe fast when her spouse is present [in the house] but with his permission. And she should not admit any mahram in his house, while the husband is present, but with his permission� (2238). A mahram is a near relative with whom it is unlawful to marry. A woman can feel free in his presence and thus need not observe purdah.
The translator gives us the rationale for this injunction. �Such is the regard which Islam gives to the natural instinct of man that it enjoins upon women not to observe (voluntary) fasts, and not to admit even those relatives of theirs in their apartments who are maharam to them so that they may not stand in the way of the husbands to satisfy their sexual urge� (note 1387).
author : ram swarup