The Ruling on Fasting for a Patient with Kidney Dialysis

Question:
May Allah protect the Shaykh. We have received a set of questions from the kidney dialysis department. One of them says: I undergo dialysis; can I fast? And if I cannot fast on a dialysis day, what is obligatory for me if fasting becomes difficult for me? Is the majority of the scholars of interpretation of the view that dialysis does not invalidate the fast? Some of them hold, O Shaykh, that dialysis does not invalidate the fast.

Answer:
No, dialysis invalidates the fast because it enters the body and the stomach, and it comes with medications and solutions. It is not the case that it does not invalidate the fast unless one is ignorant, and it does invalidate it. As for the day, you make it up from the other days. The day you undergo dialysis, you make it up later if you are able to make it up. And if the doctors advise you not to fast because you have kidney failure and they advise you to leave off fasting, then comply; do not fast. Do not be hard on yourself, for Allah is expansive. Break your fast. If you are able to make it up later, you expiate it. If you are not able, you feed one poor person for every day with a quantity of one and a half kilograms of food. This is for the one who is unable to fast, neither in its performance in Ramadan nor in making it up after Ramadan; he feeds one poor person for every day. Praise be to Allah.