Section Seventeen
Atonements
Al-Kaffārāt
A kaffārah (atonement) in the Shari’ah is the name for the means by which a person who has committed a sin or an error offers repentance, such as alms, fasting or the like. Its rulings are as follows:
1294. Atonement is obligatory on a mokallaf (a person who is obliged to perform his religious duties) when he does the following:
1- Breaking the fast in the daytime during an obligatory fasting – here there are two situations:
a- Intentionally breaking the fast – even if with a forbidden act – in the daytime in Ramadan without an excuse; its atonement is freeing a slave, or fasting for two consecutive months or feeding sixty miskins, but if the person in question is unable to do any of these, he has the choice of fasting for eighteen days or giving whatever alms he can, and if he is unable even to do this, he should ask forgiveness from Allah, the Most High.
b- Intentionally breaking the fast after zawāl (the moment the sun starts moving towards sunset at the time that is exactly in the middle between sunrise and sunset) during the day of an obligatory qadā’ fasting (i.e. outside the time set for the act) for what one failed to fast during Ramadan; its atonement is feeding ten miskins, but if he is unable to do this, he must fast for three days, and if he is unable to do even this, he should ask forgiveness from Allah.
2- Killing a sacred soul – here there are two cases:
a- Intentional killing, the atonement for which is combining all the three: freeing a slave, fasting for two consecutive months and feeding sixty miskins, but if he is unable to carry out some of them, he should ask God for forgiveness instead and carry out the rest, but if he is unable even to carry out any of those, asking forgiveness once is sufficient for all.
b- Unlawful killing without malice aforethought (manslaughter), which may be similar to intentional killing, the atonement for which is freeing a slave, but if he is unable to do so, he must fast for two consecutive months, and if he is unable to do that, he must feed sixty miskins, and if he is unable to do that, he must fast for eighteen days in addition to asking forgiveness, but if he is unable to fast, asking forgiveness will be sufficient.
Atonement is obligatory in intentional killing even if the person killed had a (Shari’ah) execution ruling against him, if he kills him without the permission of the Islamic authority. Moreover, atonement is obligatory on every individual of a group if they all participated in killing him intentionally or unlawfully by manslaughter.
3- Invalidating i‘tikāf (staying in a state of worship exclusively, usually in a mosque, for a given period) through sexual intercourse during the night - here it is an obligatory precaution to arrange its atonement like that for a wrongful killing; that is, he must first free a slave, but if cannot he must fast for two consecutive months, and if he cannot do that he must feed sixty miskins, and if he cannot do that he must combine fasting for eighteen days and asking Allah’s forgiveness, but if he is unable to fast in this case asking forgiveness is sufficient.
4- Modhāharah of the wife (i.e. declaring one’s wife as one’s mother, so abstaining from any sexual act with her, which is forbidden); the atonement for this is the same as for unlawful killing. In addition to that, if he is unable to feed miskins, he must fast for eighteen days, but if he cannot he should ask Allah forgiveness instead.
5- Breaking an oath or the like – here the kaffārah is different as follows:
a- Breaking an oath (yamin), part of which is īlā’ (which is swearing to abstain from sexual intercourse with the wife) and breaking a vow (nathr) (which includes breaking a vow to fast on a certain day); the atonement here is: freeing a slave or feeding ten miskins or clothing them, but if he is unable to do this he must fast for three days, but if he cannot do that, asking Allah’s forgiveness is sufficient.
b- Breaking a covenant, the atonement for which is like that of breaking the fast of one day of Ramadan, including the ruling regarding being unable to do it.
6- Being unable to carry out a fast for which one has made a vow; here it is an obligatory precaution for its atonement to give as alms (sadakah) one modd (three quarters of a kilogram) of food every day to a miskin, or to give two modds (i.e. one and a half kilograms) to fast on his behalf if the miskin accepts.
7- Committing some acts that are forbidden for a person in ihrām (a state of abstention from many normally allowed things, when performing certain rituals, on certain days of pilgrimage) in pilgrimage or ‘omreh, or committing what is forbidden to be done within the harām (the area delineated by specific borders within Mecca) even by a person not in ihrām, which are several things listed and explained in the book Manāsik al-hajj (The Pilgrimage Rituals).
1295. Atonement is obligatory in the different situations – except killing – only if the act calling for it was carried out by a person with his full knowledge, intention and free will, so it is not obligatory if carried out through lack of awareness or attention, or under force or duress, or out of ignorance of the prohibition. For killing, however, atonement is obligatory in both intentional and manslaughter cases as mentioned previously. It is also obligatory – as a precaution – when being unable to carry out a vowed fast even though one has an excuse.
1296. It is not obligatory to hasten to carry out the atonement in all mentioned cases, except for intentional killing – to harden its kaffārah – where one has the ability to carry out even some of it. That said, it is not allowed to delay what is not obligatory to hasten to carry out to a time when one is regarded as negligent about carrying out the duty, in which case – if the person in question delays in this way – he has sinned and he must hasten to carry it out.
1297. The atonement choice of freeing a slave played an important role in freeing the slaves, thus wiping out that phenomenon gradually, but it is not available in this time; therefore it is cancelled in the situations where it is obligatory and the person needs to ask Allah for forgiveness instead. However, if it was a choice or comes in an ordered list of the atonement choices, in this case (the ruling is certainly that) he should choose another or to move to another when unable to perform it.
1298. In fasting for two months, consecutiveness is obligatory, and sufficient to achieve that is fasting for the days of the first month and the first day of the second month, not the rest of its days which he may fast on separately, except in the case of the atonement of intentional killing in which the consecutiveness must run right through the full sixty days. It is also an obligatory precaution to fast on three consecutive days for the obligatory three days of the atonement resorted to when unable to carry out the atonement of qadā’ fasting and the atonement for breaking an oath or a vow. However, fasting for eighteen days need not be consecutive.
1299. The two months of atonement fasting are lunar months, whether complete or incomplete], so if a person starts fasting from the first day of the month, he should continue until the end of the (lunar) month and regard it as a full month even if it was incomplete. However, if he started fasting during the month, in this case it is not sufficient to regard it as full when it ends up as incomplete , but he must observe it (i.e. fast) for thirty days.
1300. When offering atonement by feeding, it must feed sixty miskins, that is: it is a must to divide each atonement over sixty shares to give one share to every miskin; it is not allowed to make one (complete) atonement for less than sixty miskins.
1301. There is no distinction between the young and adult in being regarded as poor (miskin) if the feeding is done by handing the food over, so a young person is to be given one modd like an adult; however, if the feeding is done so as to satisfy hunger, in this case one should count each two young people as one adult if all the invited people are young, and this is an obligatory precaution if they are both young people and adults. Also, inviting a young person to feed does not require the permission of his guardian unless inviting him violates the rights of the guardian.
1302. The clothing that may be given as atonement instead of the feeding must be commonly regarded as clothes, the minimum of which must cover what is commonly covered in a man’s body and a woman’s body even when she is at home. It must also be free of holes and raggedness, even if not new, and must be sewn or the like, such as matted or woven; but it is allowed – here – to hand over to the person the material and to pay the tailoring charge to whomsoever he is certain will carry out the tailoring. It is also conditional that the clothing should be suitable for the sex and age of the poor (miskin).
1303. There is no specific form for asking God forgiveness, but it is sufficient to say ‘astaghfirol-Llāh’ (I ask Allah forgiveness); and the better the asking, the better is his forgiveness.
1304. In each choice of atonement, the intention of qorbah to God (nearness to God by compliance to his commands) is obligatory; so is the intention that the act is atonement. However, when resorting to an alternative atonement, there intention that this is an alternative is not obligatory.