رمضان کی راتوں میں حرمتِ اکل و مباشرت کےمسئلے کا جائزہ، سورہ البقرہ کی آیت 187 کے تناظر میں

Revisiting the problem of Prohibition of Mating with Wives during the Nights of Ramadan, in the Perspective of the Quranic Verse 2:187

Abstract

It is assumed that it was once incumbent upon the first Muslim community to restrain from conjugal relation with their spouses during the nights of Ramadan. The traditions differ in this regard. Some say that they were supposed to carry out the restrictions during the day time of Ramadan throughout the nights of Ramadan after breaking their fast or after their sleep or after ‘Isha’ prayer. When some Muslims failed to keep up the restrictions, especially the conjugal relation with their spouses, Allāh revealed the verse, Sūrah al-Baqarah, 2:187, to remove the restrictions of Ramadan for the night time.

In this article, the author investigates if there was any religious directive regarding the said restrictions during the nights of Ramadan prior to the revelation of the verse 2:187, which it aborted. If it was not, then, how the companions developed diverse understandings of the particular restrictions during nighttime of Ramadan, and what do the words of the Ayat, ‘now, it is made lawful to you’, means, which apparently means that something was unlawful before and now it was made lawful through this verse. The author, in this paper, tries to find the answers to these questions in the light of the textual study of Qur’ān and Aḥādīth.