What Invalidates the Fast Without Requiring Expiation?

This comes up often enough that it is worth setting out the evidence rather than only the conclusion.

The evidence

The kaffarah is freeing a slave, or fasting two consecutive months, or feeding sixty poor people — in that order (Sahih al-Bukhari 1936).

The hadith records a man who came saying he was ruined, having had relations with his wife during a Ramadan day, and was given this sequence.

The Hanafis extended kaffarah to deliberate eating and drinking; the majority restricted it to intercourse.

In practice

• Making up the day is required in every case of deliberate invalidation.
• The expiation is sequential, not optional — move to the next only if unable.
• Do not conceal such a matter out of embarrassment; the man in the hadith did not.

The measure of an article like this is whether anything about tomorrow is different. Choose the one line that applies to you.

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