Can you define the acceptable niyyah (intention) of fasting; is it necessary to formulate the niyyah to fast every single day of Ramadhaan; or is it enough to make the niyyah to fast the whole month in the beginning?
Question number: 525
Date posted: 2003-10-29
Answer:
Niyyah is an extremely crucial and integral aspect of worship in Islam; this is true of salah, siyam, zakah and pilgrimage; it also applies to all of the acts of devotion and good works that we perform.
In case of any act of worship (ibaadah), the niyyah means first to cleanse and purify our motivation; or to put it differently, to make sure that we do what we do purely for sake of Allah and not for any other worldly purpose or objective; secondly, it is also important that we formulate the intention in our minds to do the specific act of worship for sake of Allah. Therefore, while fasting the month of Ramadhaan, we must resolve in our minds firmly that we are fasting the days of Ramadhaan as an act of worship; so long as we have done son in our minds then we have fulfilled the niyyah requirement. In other words, it is not necessary to state the above intention in words. If anyone does so, we cannot consider his action as sinful, although there is no need for him to do so; it is best that we stick to the practice of Salaf al-ssalih who had not been in the habit of pronouncing the niyyah in words in such acts of worship.
Now as for the question whether one must formulate niyyah every single day, this s a controversial issue among scholars: One group insists that it must be done each and every day before dawn; while another group states that it is sufficient if he formulates the intention to fast the whole month of Ramadhan in the beginning.
There is no need for us to be very rigid on this issue; everyone who wakes up for suhoor (pre-dawn meal) has already made up in his mind to fast; but still the safest way to go about in such matters is to make sure that we formulate the niyyah each and every day; by doing so we make sure that our acts of worships are not simply mechanical chores but deliberate acts of worship.
