What Corrupts a Fast: Questions About Water Entering the Body

Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

Question : (1) What should I do if I was making washing my mouth and nose during ghusl during Ramadan and water went into me? If I have to make an obligatory ghusl, how far should the water go down my throat during Ramadan? What about water going down the ear during showering?

Answer: (1) You would only have to make up the fast if you are CERTAIN that water entered your body cavity. If you think it MIGHT have, then this doubt is not sufficient to lift the initial presumption of validity.

It is obligatory to wash the mouth, not the throat. In Ramadan, one does not exaggerate, lest water go down the throat.

(2) There are three ways something can enter your body cavity while fasting:

a. Deliberately: This breaks the fast.

b. Forgetfully: This does not, because of the Prophetic (Allah bless him & give him peace) guidance that it does not. (Otherwise, legal reasoning (qiyas) alone would have indicated that it does.)

c. Mistakenly/Accidentally: This breaks the fast. An example: what you mentioned; or if one ate thinking that fajr time had not come in or maghrib time come in, when the contrary was true.

(3) No. Not unless you become certain that it has gone down your throat.

(4) No.

(5) Yes. Water that gets into the ears does not invalidate one’s fast in the Hanafi madhhab. [Maraqi, Durr] However, there is difference of opinion on this, so one should take reasonable precautions while showering, and the like.

Wassalam,
Faraz Rabbani