During Ramadan, this is going to be, I see the time is short, when one is fasting, one wants to travel, but he wants to keep the fast if possible. What criteria in terms of distance breaks the fast? This issue of keeping fast during a journey has been decided by Hazrat Masih Maud A.S. and he has also spoken on the subject in general, other parts we have raised, I mean, have also been covered.
The general picture as created by various of his sayings and verdicts, I should say, is this, that Islam does not promote keeping a fast during journeys, because the words used by the Holy Quran indicate that Allah has permitted you not to keep fast during a journey, so when, according to Hazrat Masih Maud A.S., when you permit someone out of love and consideration for him, if he does not make use of that permission, it is disrespectful in a way. If you permit your child to enjoy something, and you say, no, no, no, I’m going to study, I don’t want that permission to be used, you will not be as happy as when he thanks you so much and, you know, with a very good grace he accepts your permission and enjoys whatever is in store for him, that you like much better.
So in the light of this psychological situation, Hazrat Masih Maud A.S. inferred that Allah could have made it obligatory, could have expressed it in words, which might have meant that if you cannot keep fast during a journey because of the hardship, you are permitted but still we prefer you to keep fast. Instead of going into that, what the Holy Quran tells us is this, that while you are on a journey, you should not keep fast, you should defer the matter till such other times as you have come back to your place and settled down.
So this is not promoted. And in Ahmadiyya attitude, despite the fact that we can keep fast physically and we desire to keep fast, in respect of this special injunction in the Holy Quran, we do not keep fast during journeys. But what is a journey? Now I come to the second point. A journey for namaz has a different definition and a journey for fasting has a different definition. For the namaz, in one day, in twenty-four hours, five prayers are covered and between sunset and sunrise, three, and between sunrise and sunset two other prayers are covered.
So if you exceed in travelling the time of one prayer and run into another, at least one prayer can be conceived as between the journey, engulfed by your journey. But in the fasting this cannot happen. You can go a long way between the two extremes, two ends of the fast, that is between sunrise and sunset, and still your journey will be a part of the fasting, not that the fasting would become a part of your journey. You understand the point? So in view of this and in view of many traditions speaking on this issue, I would not refer to all these because then the subject would become rather lengthy. In nutshell I give, create the picture as we see things in Ahmadiyyat.
For the ordinary journey where prayers are permitted to be shortened, the criterion used by Ahmadis is that if you leave on a journey your own place, even if you have travelled just one mile outside the boundaries of the city, you can start halving your prayers, reducing the prayers according to the custom and tradition. And when you are approaching your own town, even if it is a furlong from your town, if you have not yet entered the town, you can still apply the rules of the journey to your prayers. How long the journey should be?
According to the older system, the journeys were measured differently by various Muslim scholars who have paid attention to this subject. According to some schools of jurisprudence, a journey means if you travel according to the old mode of travel, nine miles from your town, that begins to be a journey. Some others said no, twelve miles is the minimum. Some said seventeen or even twenty-one or twenty-two. Why this difference? If Islam is one and the injunctions are clear, why should the scholars differ with each other in the length of journey from the point of view of jurisprudence?
The simple fact is that the mode of travel differed. In some cases, a person on foot normally travelled nine miles and would prefer to stop after the nine miles. That is in view of the weak people. The strong people could go much further, but some people would consider it enough for a day to travel nine miles from a town, and they would call it a day. So those who spoke of nine miles, they had those foot travellers in mind, pedestrians. And some travelled on horseback.
They would go maybe as far as seventeen miles or twenty miles and would like to stop there and enjoy the rest of the day, pitching the tent or seeing places. And why just to stop after twenty miles or seventeen miles on a horseback was also determined by the availability of water. And the normal customary provisions for travellers, they were situated in some places twenty miles apart and some places seventeen miles apart and some places twelve miles apart.
So if you are riding a horse or a camelback, then the determination will not be made as how you travel, but the final determination would be made of how far you can travel, provided that you have provisions for your stoppage and night rest and things, water and fodder for your mount and so on. So each scholar had his own personal experience or the experience of that, the people of a certain vicinity in mind. If the posts, as they are called, the places where provisions for staying the night and other requirements of passengers are made, if they are situated in some area nine miles apart, the scholars who were discussing that subject would say nine miles is the distance of journey.
If they were twenty miles apart, they would say twenty miles is the distance of journey. According to our observation in India, during the Mughal Empire days, to the best of my knowledge they were never farther apart than twenty miles. The periods between the two places of rest, or watering places as they are called in English, was generally either twenty miles or less than twenty miles, seventeen, sixteen miles.
So the difference is according to the variation of their personal experiences. Now that shows that fundamentally when we interpret the Holy Quran, we must interpret the Holy Quran according to the situations prevailing, not according to the situations which prevailed once in history. We must interpret these verses in view of what situation is prevailing not only in that time generally but in your place where you are living.
So the journey here becomes a very open question now in the modern times. It becomes very difficult to define a journey in view of the fast mode of travel, trains, cars, aeroplanes and so on and so forth. So how can one define these journeys and how one can solve this issue was made easy for us by the general practice of Hazrat Messiah Maud A.S. and his caliphs after him, and particularly by the second caliph, Hazrat Musleh Maud, who discussing this subject gave us a general piece of advice.
He said it is difficult for me to measure in mileage the journey after which you should consider that you can use the permissions for reduced number of rakaats in prayers and so on, but I advise you to judge the matter yourself when a man is on journey, he knows that he is on journey, and when he is making a short trip and returning, you know, a short player trip and returning after a few hours or during the daytime sometime, he knows that it is just a player trip, it is not a journey. So he gave us this golden line to follow that if you know that you are on a journey, I am going to Lahore from Rabwah or even to Batala from Qadian and so on, distance is not what is important.
What is important is my personal attitude and my mental experience. If I have prepared myself for a journey, then even after I have left the boundaries of my town by a few yards, I am permitted to say the prayers in reduced rakaats and skip the fasts because I am on a journey. But if I am on a player trip and that player trip is up to Islamabad which is 40 miles from here, it would not be called a journey and I know that better than anybody else. So except for this definition and this mode of approach, I don’t conceive any other definition or mode of approach which would solve problems rather than create more problems for us.
About the fasting, I’ll add further observations. The practice among Ahmadis is this, that because generally the period of stay for a guest is considered to be three days, according to Islamic traditions, so for the fasting, this period becomes the guideline for us. If we are staying in some one place more than three days, we begin to fast and we consider the journey part over and the settlement part beginning. If it is a longish period, of course you are permitted to keep fasts, but if you are visiting a place and mean to stay there for a shorter period than three days, then you do not keep fast because you are on a journey. This is not a rule which is binding on you, this is an inference, so it doesn’t become binding on anybody.
But what does become binding is this, that while you are actually travelling during a journey, then you should not keep fast. So the rest is left to you. What we have observed during the Qadian days, because he referred also to the Qadian days, because in those days, the majority of the people living there belonged to the companions of the Promised Messiah, who had been taught Islam by the Promised Messiah directly, and then later on had the benefit of the company of his earlier generations and companions and caliphs and so on.
So those are the times who are like uswa to us for the modern times. So during those times we observed this generally practiced, that if somebody stayed more than three days, he would start keeping fast and he would not consider himself on a journey. But as far as the prayer timing is concerned, this is established according to the old Yudhisthira Purana school, based on many traditions, that three days are not the period to determine your journey.
They are either 15 days or in some cases even more than 15 days. If you are staying in one place during your journey, you are breaking your journey, and you stay there for 14 days for instance, you will say your prayers according to the reduced number of rakat permissible to you. And all that period of 14 days would be considered a part of the journey. If you extend that period of stay, after say 13 days, suddenly you decide to stay there, you know, when it’s not a part of the previous plan, you decide suddenly that all right, I extend my journey to 10 more days. Still you would be on journey.
And the same rules of journey prayers would apply to your prayers. If you, before the end of 10 days for instance, you decide to extend it further to 13 days more, still you would be on journey. That uncertainty part here is the integral part of a journey’s atmosphere. So as long as you are not certain, that is to say in your plans, in your attitude, to stay in one place for more than 14 days, you continue to remain unsettled in mind and that uncertainty of approach or situation would permit you to say your prayers as if you are on a journey.
It is known that Hazrat Masih Maud A.S. while appearing in Gurdaspur stayed there for many months continuously, not knowing when that period of journey would end, continued to apply the rules of journey prayers to his prayers. Now when he did it, you must bear in mind that he was not one of those who avoid prayers, who would seek excuses to shorten the prayer. He was one who would spend most of his time while on journey still in prayers. Again this was his attitude of deep respect to Allah and his Prophet, that if they permitted you, you must be respectful of that permission and use it with gratitude, not pose as if you can do better and so you don’t regard these permissions, you don’t need these permissions.
So this is all that I had to say to you regarding this issue. If any part of your query is left untouched, you better come and now, now is it complete? Okay. Alhamdulillah. You know, I knew you wanted to find out less than I have told you, but I wanted to give you more than you inquired, because such opportunities come seldom your way, so I intentionally prolonged the answer beyond the region to your inquiry, region of your inquiry.
