Question :
A question was asked regarding whether it was permitted to inject [oneself or another] during [one's fast in] Ramadan.
Fatwa in Brief: If these injections are
intended to provide the body with nutrients (mughadhi),
then they break one’s fast. If this is not the purpose
for the injections [i.e. if they are medically
necessary], then one’s fast is not broken.
Shaykh Ibn al-‘Uthaymin,
Fatawa al-Siyam, p. 58
Response:
Injections do not break one’s
fast, whether this involves nutrients or otherwise. This
is because a substance injected into the body is not
processed in the usual way [i.e. it does not enter
through the mouth and continue into the digestive
system].
Commentary:
In May 1919, [Egypt’s Grand
Mufti from 1914-20] Shaykh Muhammad Bikhit al-Muti‘i
ruled they injections into the vein, muscle or under the
skin do not break a Muslim’s fast. His opinion was based
on the idea that substances entering the body through
injections (or through the skin’s pores) do not reach
the abdomen or stomach. Hence, they [these substances
and the injections themselves] do not fall in the
category of a fast-breaker. And this opinion agrees with
those of the majority of scholars.
Al-Muti‘i ruled that a
Muslim’s fast is only broken when a substance reaches
the abdomen and settles there. That is to say, this
substance must remain solely within the abdomen, and
that nothing of it [this substance] remains outside the
abdomen, nor connected to anything outside the abdomen.
[Further, according to al-Muti‘i] This injected
substance must reach the abdomen through the usual paths
[i.e. it must be eaten]. In contrast, the skin’s pores,
and or other such entrances, are clearly not the body’s
usual pathways into the abdomen. In modern medicine,
injections introduce substances under the skin, whether
this [skin] belongs to the upper arm, leg, the backside,
or to any other part of the body. Such injections
cannot, therefore, nullify one’s fast, as they do not
introduce substances into the abdomen through the
correct paths. For, even if an injected substance
reaches the abdomen, it travels there via the skin, and
not via the workings of the digestive system.
And God knows best.
Dr. ‘Ali Mansur