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Ramadan’s Indispensable Blessings
Author : Dr. Abdallah Rabab'ah
Date Added : 09-11-2026

Ramadan’s Indispensable Blessings

Every year Ramadan arrives, and the sincere believer and the devoted Muslim greet it with high resolve and overflowing joy. In the hearts of the righteous, it holds a special place and a distinguished rank. It is the most blessed of months, the richest in goodness, the widest in benefit, and the highest in station. Allah honored it with the goodness He placed in it, and His Messenger magnified and blessed it, calling it “the month of Allah.” It is the month of obedience and worship, of goodness and blessing, the month in which Allah revealed the Qur’an as guidance for mankind and as clear proofs of guidance and criterion. If only Muslims would give it its due, honor its rank, and seize its hours and moments.

-The believer welcomes it with sincere repentance, by which Allah erases sins, raises ranks, and turns evil deeds into good ones: “O you who believe, turn to Allah in sincere repentance” [al-Taḥrīm/8].

-The believer welcomes Ramadan by guarding the prayers and their times and keeping up the congregation. One prayer to the next is an expiation for what lies between them, and whoever guards the prayer will find in it light, deliverance, and proof on the Day of Resurrection.

-The Muslim welcomes Ramadan with the resolve to fast. Fasting purifies souls of their wrongdoing, frees them from sins, and trains them in patience, which is half of faith, the secret of a person’s happiness, and the believer’s provision when trials grow severe and distress deepens.

-The believer welcomes Ramadan with the resolve to recite the Qur’an, to reflect on its verses, and to learn its rulings on the lawful and the unlawful. The Qur’an is what sets right people’s beliefs, straightens their character, purifies their souls, and refines their minds, as Allah says {what means}: “There has come to you from Allah a light and a clear Book” [al-Māʾidah/15].

-The Muslim welcomes Ramadan with the resolve to keep up the Tarāwīḥ prayer and the night prayer, for this is the habit of the righteous and the way of the God-conscious. Allah says {what means}: “They used to sleep but little of the night, and before dawn they would seek forgiveness” [al-Dhāriyāt/17-18]. He also says of the believers {what means}: “Their sides forsake their beds, calling upon their Lord in fear and hope” [al-Sajdah/16]. The commentators said this refers to the night prayer, in which the worshipper leaves his bed and his family, forgoes sleep and comfort, and turns to Allah the Exalted in fear and hope, out of faith and seeking reward. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: “Whoever stands in prayer during Ramadan out of faith and seeking reward will have his previous sins forgiven.” {Related by Bukhari & Muslim}. The Muslim should therefore prepare himself to receive this noble guest and great month.

-Allah made the fast of this noble month obligatory upon Muslims, made it a pillar of the religion, and recorded its obligation in several verses of the Qur’an, so that its ruling would endure as long as the Qur’an endures. Allah the Exalted says {what means}: “O you who believe, fasting has been prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you, that you may attain God-consciousness” [al-Baqarah/183]. In addition, He says {what means}: “The month of Ramadan is that in which the Qur’an was revealed as guidance for mankind and clear proofs of guidance and criterion. So whoever witnesses the month, let him fast it” [al-Baqarah/185]. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) counted the fast of Ramadan as a pillar of Islam, a foundation of the religion, and one of the greatest means of drawing near to the Lord of the worlds. He said: “Islam is built upon five: the testimony that there is no god but Allah, establishing the prayer, giving zakāh, Ḥajj to the House, and fasting Ramadan.” In another ḥadīth: “The bonds of Islam and the foundations of the religion are three, upon which Islam is established. Whoever abandons one of them is a disbeliever on that account, his blood lawful: the testimony that there is no god but Allah, the obligatory prayer, and the fast of Ramadan.” [Musnad Abī Yaʿlā al-Mawṣilī]

-The Muslims are unanimously agreed on the obligation of fasting Ramadan and regard it as known from the religion by necessity (Basics of the religion of Islam known to everyone). The worker in his factory, the merchant in his shop, and the soldier in his barracks all know it, and its obligation is known to everyone.

-Allah gathered a great deal of goodness in the month of Ramadan. It is reported of its virtue: “Whoever fasts Ramadan out of faith and seeking reward will have his previous sins forgiven, and whoever stands in prayer during Ramadan out of faith and seeking reward will have his previous sins forgiven.” It is a month whose beginning is mercy, whose middle is forgiveness, and whose end is emancipation from the Fire. It is reported that Allah the Exalted frees a number of people from the Fire every night at the time of breaking the fast, and on the last night He frees as many as He freed on all the other nights. We ask Allah the Exalted to let us reach Ramadan, to grant us success in making the most of it, and to free our necks from the Fire.

-Ramadan in the minds of Muslims is not Ramadan in the lives of Muslims. In the lives of Muslims it is bloated stomachs and endless TV serials. In their minds, it is bound to momentous events that changed the course of history and left the deepest mark on the history of humanity. The greatest of these Ramadan events is the descent of revelation upon the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). While he was worshipping in the cave of Ḥirāʾ, the trustworthy Jibrīl came down to him with the first verses of the Noble Qur’an: “Read in the name of your Lord who created. He created man from a clinging clot” [al-ʿAlaq/1-2]. The days passed until Ramadan of the second year after the Hijrah arrived, and in it occurred the Great Battle of Badr, the first battle in which Allah gave Islam honor and the Muslims victory, and defeated the disbelievers and polytheists. He reminded the believers of this favor, saying: “And Allah had already given you victory at Badr while you were weak, so fear Allah that you may be grateful” [Āl ʿImrān/123]. The days passed again until Ramadan of the eighth year after the Hijrah arrived, when Allah gave the believers a far greater victory and defeated idolatry and the idolaters.

-Every Ramadan, Muslims enter the school of fasting, where they learn the foundations of noble character, refined manners, and honorable conduct. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: “Ramadan, a month of blessing, has come to you. In it, there is goodness with which Allah envelops you: He sends down mercy, wipes away sins, and answers prayers. Allah looks upon your striving with one another and boasts of you before His angels. So show Allah good from yourselves, for the wretched one is he who is deprived of Allah’s mercy in it.” Narrated by al-Ṭabarānī.

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Summarized Fatawaa

What is the ruling on forgetting an integral of the prayer?

Praise be to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon our Master, the Messenger of Allah.
 
Whoever forgets an integral (Rukn) of the prayer and remembers it before reaching the equivalent point in the subsequent unit (Rak'ah), must return to it (i.e., perform it) and complete his prayer, then perform the prostration of forgetfulness (Sujud al-Sahw) at the end of his prayer. However, if he remembers it after reaching the equivalent point in the subsequent unit, the Rak'ah in which the integral was forgotten is invalidated, and the current unit takes its place; he then completes a full Rak'ah to compensate and performs the prostration of forgetfulness.
 
It is stated in Nihayat al-Muhtaj ila Sharh al-Minhaj (Vol.1/P.543): 'If he becomes certain at the end of his prayer, or after the Salam—provided the interval is not long according to custom and he has not stepped on an impurity—that he omitted a prostration from the final Rak'ah, he must perform it and repeat the Tashahhud, as his previous Tashahhud occurred before its proper place. If the omission was from a Rak'ah other than the final one, he must perform a full Rak'ah, because the deficient unit was completed by a prostration from the subsequent one, rendering the rest of that subsequent unit void.' And Allah the Exalted knows best.

The Prophet ﷺ said: "There will emerge from my nation people who will drink the Qurʾān as they drink milk" — is this ḥadīth authentic, and what does it mean?

All praise is due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon our master the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.
ʿUqbah ibn ʿĀmir, may Allah be pleased with him, narrated that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: "There will emerge from my nation people who will drink the Qurʾān as they drink milk." (Reported by al-Ṭabarānī in al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr, and cited by al-Haythamī in Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid, who stated: "Its narrators are trustworthy.")
The meaning of this ḥadīth is that there will emerge from this blessed nation people who recite the Holy Qurʾān without reflecting upon its meanings or pondering its rulings — the noble verses passing over their tongues just as milk passes over them when it is drunk, leaving no trace of thought, understanding, or contemplation behind. [See: al-Taysīr bi-Sharḥ al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr,Vol.2/P.63] And Allah the Almighty knows best.

What is the ruling on performing the night prayer (*qiyām al-layl*) between the first and second adhān of Fajr? And which is better: delaying the prayer until shortly before the Fajr adhān, or performing it earlier than that?

 

All praise is due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon our master, the Messenger of Allah.
The time for night prayer (qiyām al-layl) begins after the Maghrib prayer and lasts until the second adhān of Fajr. The best time for it is the last third of the night, and best of all are the fourth and fifth sixths of the night. If the night is divided into two halves, the latter half is better.
Whoever intends to pray at night is encouraged to delay the Witr until he has prayed the night prayer. If he knows that he will not wake up, it is better for him to pray and perform Witr before sleeping, so that he does not miss both the night prayer and the Witr.
It is stated in Mughnī al-Muḥtāj (Vpl.1/p.462): “I say: The voluntary prayer of the night, that is, the absolute voluntary prayer (al-nafl al-muṭlaq), is better than the absolute voluntary prayer of the day, because of the report in Muslim: ‘The best prayer after the obligatory prayer is the night prayer.’ In another narration of his: ‘In the night there is an hour that no Muslim man meets while asking Allah for any good of this world and the next except that He gives it to him, and that is every night.’ It is also because the night is a time of heedlessness. I restricted the voluntary prayer to the absolute kind following the commentator, although what the ḥadīth and the underlying meaning require is that the night rawātib be preferred over the day rawātib, since the jurists preferred the two rakʿahs of Fajr over everything except Witr. The middle of the night is better than its two ends if it is divided into thirds, because heedlessness is greatest then and worship is hardest. If he wishes to pray during some third, the best is the fourth and fifth sixths, based on the ḥadīth in the two Ṣaḥīḥs: ‘The most beloved prayer to Allah the Exalted is the prayer of Dāwūd: he would sleep half the night, stand for a third of it, and sleep for a sixth.’ Then the latter part is better than the first if he divides it into two halves, because of the saying of Allah the Exalted: ‘And in the hours before dawn they would ask forgiveness’ [al-Dhāriyāt: 18], and the report of the two Shaykhs: ‘Our Lord, Blessed and Exalted, descends,’ meaning His command descends, ‘to the lowest heaven when the last third of the night remains, and says: Who calls upon Me, that I may answer him? Who asks of Me, that I may give him? Who seeks My forgiveness, that I may forgive him?’”
It is also stated in ʿUmdat al-Sālik (p. 60): “It is better to perform it [the Witr] immediately after the sunnah of ʿIshāʾ, unless he has tahajjud, in which case it is better to delay it so that he performs Witr after it. If he performs Witr and then wishes to pray tahajjud, he prays two rakʿahs at a time and does not repeat the Witr, nor does he need to cancel it with a single rakʿah before the tahajjud. It is recommended that he not deliberately pray after it.”
Qiyām al-layl is a term applied to any prayer performed at night. Tahajjud, on the other hand, refers to the night prayer that follows sleep, whether it is prayed after Maghrib or after ʿIshāʾ, or the prayer performed after ʿIshāʾ without sleep. On this basis, the Witr is also called tahajjud, since it is only prayed after ʿIshāʾ.
It is stated in al-Majmūʿ (Vol.4/p.84): “The sound position, as stated in al-Umm and al-Mukhtaṣar, is that the Witr is called tahajjud.”
It is stated in Nihāyat al-Zayn (Vol.1/p.114): “Among the absolute voluntary prayers is qiyām al-layl. If it is performed after sleep, even during the time of Maghrib and after having prayed ʿIshāʾ early (taqdīman), it is called tahajjud.”
And it is stated in Ḥāshiyat al-Bujayrimī ʿalā al-Khaṭīb (Vol.1/p.418): “His statement: ‘(the night prayer)’: the genitive construction (iḍāfah) carries the sense of fī, meaning a prayer in the night. His statement: ‘(it would be more fitting)’: the reason it is more fitting is that the night prayer includes both tahajjud and other prayers.” And Allah Almighty knows best.

What is Tarawih prayer?

Tarawih prayer is the night prayer (Qiyam) performed during the month of Ramadan. It is called "Tarawih" because Muslims used to prolong the standing (qiyam) in it and take brief rests after every four rak‘ahs.

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