Ayatollah Khamenei’s Fatwa on Fasting during Ramadan in the Time of Coronavirus

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei has answered a question regarding the fasting during the coronavirus outbreak.

What follows is the question and the answer:

Question: “What is the rule for fasting in current circumstances that the coronavirus is spreading?” a person asked the Leader via his office.

Answer: “Among the effects of fasting is the emergence of spiritual state and inner purity, individual and social piety, strengthening the resistance against hardships, and its role in the health of the human body, and God has set a great reward for fasting people,” answered the Leader.

“Fasting is one of the necessities of religion and the pillars of Islamic law, and it is not permissible to abstain from fasting during the holy month of Ramadan unless one finds a rational suspicion that fasting would cause disease, aggravate a disease, or prolongs the disease’s period and postpones recovery,” he said, adding that in these circumstances, fasting is void, but it is necessary to make up for it.

If this assurance, he continued, is obtained from the words of a specialist and pious doctor, it will be enough.

“Therefore, if a person has fears and worries about the above-mentioned matters and this fear has a rational origin, there is no obligation for them to fast but they have to keep a fast after Ramadan.”