Questioner: Is it good to do fasting on Friday if it’s not Ramadan time? And why is it that Friday is not chosen for voluntary fasting?
Huzoor (rh): Voluntary fasting? Because Friday is a sort of day of Eid for Muslims. You know, Eid is like Christmas. According to the Muslims, every Friday brings jubilation to the Muslims because of its special blessings. And those blessings are so many and manifold in many ways. So that is why normally it is understood to be a day of celebrations and jubilation, which does not go with the concept of fasting. Both can’t be together. But in the month of Ramadan, it’s a different story. Each day is a fasting day with a promised day of celebration at the end of Ramadan. So whatever you lose by way of four Fridays, one Eid day follows which is much bigger and which brings far more of happiness to you than each Friday which appears 50 times a year. Out of that, four will be, of course, deducted. So instead of these four Fridays being declared as non-fasting days, God has given us one big Eid day at the end of the Ramadan. Right? Moreover, remember this, that Islam does not believe in that sort of Sabbath which God had granted or in some cases imposed upon the Israelites. They had failed to carry the message. And Sabbath became a source of curse for them instead by breaking the law repeatedly. So in Islam, that trial is not imposed on the Muslims. And there is a strange reference in a verse of the Holy Quran to the fact that the Sabbath itself was imposed by way of a sort of punishment upon the Jews. And it was not just the breaking of the Sabbath which brought the wrath of Allah. The Sabbath itself was imposed to discipline them because previously they behaved in such an undisciplined manner that Sabbath came to be a trial as well as a punishment for them. So there was no need for the continuation of that punishment. Do you understand? And that is why there was no Sabbath for Christians either. The phase of Sabbath was over the moment Jesus Christ appeared. And although he did not cancel a jot of the Bible, Allah, as mentioned in the Holy Quran, has made the Sabbath a sign of Allah’s unhappiness with Jews. So when they accepted Jesus Christ, there was no reason to continue this sign of, if not wrath, of displeasure of Allah. So if you look deeply into the whole matter, you will be surprised to find that despite the fact that there is no more Sabbath for the Christians, yet the Bible is not changed. Because in the Bible, as explained in the Holy Quran, Sabbath was imposed not from the beginning but at a later date as a sign of displeasure of Allah. So if this condition, this precondition is not present, this consequential sign must also be removed. And this is exactly what happened. There was no Sabbath at the time of Abraham. There was no Sabbath at the time of Hazrat Yaqub, known as Israel. There was no Sabbath until Moses came, and it was not revealed in the very beginning. After the Jews of the time continued to misbehave, then the injunction of Sabbath appeared. So it was a temporary injunction, according to the Bible, related to the misbehavior of the Jews. So those who accepted Jesus Christ with such great sacrifice, why should they continue to be punished? See? So there is no inconsistency whatsoever in that. Right?
