IB World Religions 5.2.3. the Pillars II: Sawm and Hajj Notes

5.2.3. The Pillars II: Sawm and Hajj

Sawm and the month

1. Sawm is the fast of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Muslim lunar year, and the fourth pillar. Qur'an 2:183 presents it as prescribed for Muslims as it was for those before them, so that they may attain taqwa (God-consciousness).
2. The fast runs from fajr, first light, to maghrib, sunset. Muslims give up food, drink, smoking and sexual relations in that window, and are expected to guard speech and temper as well.
3. The month opens and closes by sighting the new moon. Communities differ over whether a local sighting, a sighting anywhere, or astronomical calculation should settle it, so Id can fall on different days in one city.
4. Two meals bracket the day. Suhur is eaten before dawn, and iftar breaks the fast at sunset with dates and water in imitation of the Prophet, followed by a meal often shared at the mosque.
5. The nights carry extra worship. Sunni Muslims commonly pray tarawih in congregation, working through the whole Qur'an across the month, while Shi'ah Muslims more often pray alone and gather for supplication.
6. Laylat al-Qadr, the Night of Power, falls in the last ten nights and marks the first revelation of the Qur'an. Qur'an 97 calls it better than a thousand months, and some Muslims keep i'tikaf, retreat inside the mosque, for those days.

Exemptions and their reasons

1. The Qur'an builds relief into the command itself. Qur'an 2:185 says that Allah intends ease and not hardship, and every exemption the jurists derive rests on that verse.
2. Some people are excused and owe the days later. The sick and travellers keep qada, the missed days, once they recover or arrive, and women make up days lost to menstruation, childbirth, pregnancy or nursing.
3. Others are excused for good. The chronically ill and the frail elderly pay fidyah, feeding a poor person for each day missed, because there is no prospect of their making the fast up.
4. Children carry no obligation before puberty, though many fast part of the day from around seven to learn the rhythm, and people who lack mental capacity are not bound at all.
5. Schools differ on the detail. Jurists disagree over the travel distance that triggers the concession and over whether a pregnant woman owes qada, fidyah or both, and Ja'fari rulings diverge from the four Sunni schools.
6. Breaking the fast deliberately is another matter. It incurs kaffarah, an expiation of freeing a slave, fasting sixty consecutive days or feeding sixty poor people, which measures how seriously the duty is taken.

Fasts beyond Ramadan

1. Ramadan is the only fast every Muslim owes, but voluntary fasting is widespread. Nafl fasts are recommended rather than required, and Muslims keep them for reward and for self-discipline.
2. The commonest pattern follows the Prophet's practice: Mondays and Thursdays, and the three white days in the middle of each lunar month when the moon is full.
3. Many Sunni Muslims fast six days of Shawwal after Id ul-Fitr, on a hadith saying this completes the year's fasting, and a good number also fast the ninth and tenth of Muharram.
4. That Muharram fast, on Ashura, is kept by Sunnis in memory of the deliverance of Musa (Moses) from Pharaoh. Shi'ah Muslims mark the same date as mourning for Imam ul-Husayn, and fasting is not its point.
5. Some days may not be fasted at all. Fasting is forbidden on Id ul-Fitr and Id ul-Adha, so no act of private piety is allowed to cancel a day of communal celebration.
6. Fasting also serves as expiation elsewhere in the law, for broken oaths and for offences committed on hajj. Muslims therefore treat it as a general instrument rather than a Ramadan speciality.

Makkah, the Ka'bah and Zamzam

1. Hajj is pilgrimage to Makkah and the fifth pillar, owed once in a lifetime by every Muslim with the means and the health for it, a condition jurists call istita'ah.
2. The city lies inside a sacred precinct, the haram, where fighting, hunting and uprooting plants are forbidden. Saudi law restricts entry to the precinct to Muslims.
3. At its centre stands the Ka'bah, a stone cube in the courtyard of the Masjid al-Haram. Muslims hold that Ibrahim (Abraham) and his son Isma'il raised it as the first house built for the worship of Allah alone.
4. The building is almost bare. It is draped in the kiswah, a black cloth embroidered with Qur'anic verses and renewed each year, and the Black Stone is set into one corner, kissed or saluted by pilgrims as they pass.
5. Muslims are careful about what the Ka'bah is not. They do not worship it, and its function is to fix the qiblah, so that a congregation in Jakarta and one in Casablanca face the same point on earth.
6. Beside it lies the well of Zamzam. Muslims connect it to Hajar (Hagar), left in the valley with the infant Isma'il, who ran between the hills of Safa and Marwah searching for water until the spring rose at the child's feet.

The rites of hajj

1. Hajj occupies five days, the eighth to the twelfth of Dhu al-Hijjah, the last month of the year. Its rites retrace events Muslims associate with Ibrahim, Hajar and Isma'il.
2. Pilgrims enter ihram at fixed boundary points called miqat. Men wear two unstitched white cloths and women ordinary modest dress, all giving up perfume, cutting hair, quarrelling and sexual relations while chanting the talbiyah.
3. At the Masjid al-Haram they perform tawaf, seven circuits of the Ka'bah, then sa'y, walking seven times between Safa and Marwah in memory of Hajar's search, and drink from Zamzam.
4. The essential rite is wuquf, the standing at Arafat on the ninth day from midday to sunset. Muslims hold that hajj is invalid without it, and pilgrims spend the afternoon in prayer on the plain where the Prophet gave his final sermon.
5. After a night at Muzdalifah pilgrims gather pebbles and move on to Mina to throw them at the jamarat, three pillars marking Ibrahim's rejection of temptation, then offer or pay for an animal sacrifice as Id ul-Adha begins.
6. Men shave the head or crop the hair and women cut a fingertip's length, ihram ends, and pilgrims return to Makkah for a further tawaf. Many travel afterwards to the Prophet's mosque in Madinah, which is not part of hajj.

Umrah, ziyarah and conditions

1. Umrah, the lesser pilgrimage, uses only ihram, tawaf and sa'y, and may be made at any time of year. It brings reward but does not discharge the obligation of hajj.
2. Hajj binds only those who can meet it. Istita'ah covers bodily capacity, the cost of the journey, safety on the road and enough left behind to keep dependants, and debts are normally settled first.
3. Muslims who cannot travel may send a substitute. Badal hajj is a pilgrimage performed on behalf of somebody permanently unable to go or already dead, and Sunni and Shi'ah jurists alike accept it.
4. Numbers are managed by quota. Saudi Arabia allots each country roughly a thousand places for every million Muslims, so Indonesian applicants can wait decades, and those who return are often addressed as hajji.
5. Ziyarah, visiting, is a separate category. Shi'ah pilgrims commonly travel to the shrines of Imam Ali at Najaf and Imam ul-Husayn at Karbala, and Twelver teaching calls these visits highly meritorious but never a substitute for hajj.
6. Sunni scholars differ over such visits. Salafi teaching restricts them sharply, while much South Asian and North African Sunni practice includes visiting the tombs of saints, and both branches agree that hajj alone is the pillar.