Expiation for Repeating a Vow Regarding a Single Sin
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
This questioner, Maim Ta from Riyadh, says: Honorable Shaykh, may Allah reward you with good. I am a young man who vowed to abandon a sin, but I returned to it repeatedly. I repeated the vow, and every time I vowed, I returned to this sin several times. Now, praise be to Allah, I have left this sin. However, is an expiation required for every oath, or is one expiation sufficient? Please note that my oath regarding the sin was a single one. Please inform us, may Allah reward you.
Answer:
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and may Allah send prayers and blessings upon our Prophet Muhammad, and upon his family and all his Companions. To proceed: It is obligatory for the Muslim to stay away from sins, their causes, and their means, so that he does not fall into them. It is not sufficient for a person to repent while remaining in the environment of sin, continuing to engage with its causes and what brings him close to it. Rather, he must sever the relationship with it completely and stay away from it and its people. Then, if he falls into some sin due to the command of the soul that incites to evil and the enemy, Shaytan, he must hasten to repent promptly, without procrastinating or delaying. He does not need vows or oaths; he needs a sincere resolve and a pure intention. There is no need for oaths or vows to leave this sin. However, regarding what the questioner mentioned—that he made a vow a certain number of times regarding one sin and did not pay the expiation, and he repeated the oaths in various instances without paying the expiation—he owes only one expiation. This is because the thing he was warned against is one, and he did not pay the expiation despite the repetition of the vows, which are equivalent to oaths. He owes one expiation, which is the expiation for an oath: feeding ten poor people or clothing them.
This questioner, Maim Ta from Riyadh, says: Honorable Shaykh, may Allah reward you with good. I am a young man who vowed to abandon a sin, but I returned to it repeatedly. I repeated the vow, and every time I vowed, I returned to this sin several times. Now, praise be to Allah, I have left this sin. However, is an expiation required for every oath, or is one expiation sufficient? Please note that my oath regarding the sin was a single one. Please inform us, may Allah reward you.
Answer:
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and may Allah send prayers and blessings upon our Prophet Muhammad, and upon his family and all his Companions. To proceed: It is obligatory for the Muslim to stay away from sins, their causes, and their means, so that he does not fall into them. It is not sufficient for a person to repent while remaining in the environment of sin, continuing to engage with its causes and what brings him close to it. Rather, he must sever the relationship with it completely and stay away from it and its people. Then, if he falls into some sin due to the command of the soul that incites to evil and the enemy, Shaytan, he must hasten to repent promptly, without procrastinating or delaying. He does not need vows or oaths; he needs a sincere resolve and a pure intention. There is no need for oaths or vows to leave this sin. However, regarding what the questioner mentioned—that he made a vow a certain number of times regarding one sin and did not pay the expiation, and he repeated the oaths in various instances without paying the expiation—he owes only one expiation. This is because the thing he was warned against is one, and he did not pay the expiation despite the repetition of the vows, which are equivalent to oaths. He owes one expiation, which is the expiation for an oath: feeding ten poor people or clothing them.
Source
نور على الدرب - الفوزان - 03/164 — archive.org (1:02)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.