or fast 60 consecutive days if you want to have her

Q58 V4 proceeds to say, ‘And he who does not find [a slave] – then a fast for two months consecutively before they touch one another; and he who is unable – then the feeding of sixty poor persons…’

Simply put, the next atonements are fasting for two months or feeding 60 poor people; but the question is on what conditions do those penalties apply? When can one move from one to the other? And the answers are in yajid that’s translated to ‘find’ above, and yastati’ that’s translated to ‘unable’; the task here is to be able to paint a picture that makes it easy to grasp when to choose one or the other.

Let’s start with yajid; its root alphabets are waw, jim and dal, and 3 forms of the word occurred a total of 106 times in the Quran. And I find that Q24 V33, a place where yajid was also used, but with more character, can help shed light on what yajid means.

There, Allah says ‘But let them who find not [the means for] marriage abstain until Allah enriches them from His bounty…’. The word translated to ‘abstain’ is yasta’fif, ‘find’ is yajid, ‘enrich’ is yugniy from ganiy, and ‘bounty’ is fadli.

To make sense of all these, we’ll look into A’fif. A’fif is the root word of yasta’fif and it is said of the small amount of milk which remains in the udder of a female animal after feeding her young, like the cow for instance. When her calf starts suckling, its sucking pattern tells the brain to release oxytocin which squeezes the sacs from within as the calf continues to suckle. And to buttress that point, dairy farmers inject the cow with oxytocin when the milk production stops and there is still milk in the udder.

But how does this help to define ‘find’? What this means is that the milk only remains in the udder because it is lacking the required oxytocin that it needs to facilitate its production. And that’s why Allah, the a’limul khabir, continues that verse by saying that the bachelor should be like the milk in the udder, and stay put, abstain, ‘…until Allah enriches them from His bounty…’ which will be synonymous with the milk in the udder that awaits oxytocin before it is then released. Allahu Akbar! How perfect Allah’s words are, every. single. time.

And so if we apply this to Q58 V4, what we get is that when Allah said ‘And he who does not find…’, should actually be ‘and he who is not enriched’, fortified, empowered, are those that can move to the next penalty of fasting for 2 months consecutively.

And what that means is that even if one is able to find a slave if one is not enriched to afford freeing the said slave, then one can move to the next penalty. But if one can find, and one is enriched, just like the milk enriched with oxytocin, one must free the slave, and not stay back, or in this case, move to fasting for 2 consecutive months.

Let me segue a little bit on the issue of ‘abstaining’ from marriage until one is enriched by Allah; I just want to say that this ‘enrichment’ can take different forms. There is no particular amount required; I think what’s required, and may make one so ‘enriched’ is not necessarily the wherewithal being at hand, but that there is a plan in place that will take care of the couple when they get married.

And an example of such said circumstance is the way Moses got married to his wife as we see in Q28 V28 where he agreed to work for his father-in-law for 8 to 10 years as his pay of dowry. And through that, he was able to secure a job, wife and a new life. So, whatever the dynamic of couples out there seeking to be married; if there is a working or workable plan in place, I think that should suffice as being enriched, whether it is from one’s father-in-law, mother-in-law, wife etc.

Back to Q58 V4, if the husband that declares ziHar on his wife isn’t so enriched as to be able to find, and or free a slave, then and only then can he move to fasting for 2 months consecutively, which is give or take, 60 days. Consecutively bro, successively, and that means that if one, for whatever reason didn’t fast on day 49, one has to start all over. Bro!

I think the 60 consecutive days of fasting should totally be a thing even outside ziHar. For one, when he is faced with that decision; he has to decide whether to let her go or fast 60 days consecutively. The only thing that will make him choose to fast for 60 days back to back will be his love for her.

And so I think when making a decision to marry someone, perhaps one of the questions one should ask one’s self to be sure that one is really in love with the other person is if one would be willing to fast 60 days consecutively for the to-be if push comes to shove. And what that also means is that bachelors and spinsters should be of so good a character that someone will think them worthy of fasting 60 consecutive days on their behalf, and or work for 10 years just to be able to marry them. I mean, Moses is definitely a romantic guy, no?

By the way, do you know the only other place that one’s atonement demands fasting for 2 months consecutively in the Quran? That would be Q4 V92. And do you know the act that must have been done? Murder! And if one looks deeply at what ziHar means, one can see a parallel line between ziHar and Murder; both erases one (tries to at least), whilst the former erases one in marriage, the latter erases one in life. And in the case of Murder too, it was mentioned as a substitute for freeing a slave.

So as not to make this piece cumbersome, I will delve into the feeding of 60 poor people in the next piece inshaAllah. Amin.