Can You Cut or Trim Nails or Hair While Fasting?

What is the ruling on cutting nails or trimming pubic hair while fasting during the day for Muslims?

It is the question frequently asked by Muslims, especially during the holy month of Ramadan, where many think that things like cutting nails and trimming pubic hair during the day during Ramadan could break your fasting. So how does Islam regulate this?

Is Cutting Nails or Trimming Pubic Hair While Fasting Allowed?

Cutting nails and trimming hair on the body, including pubic hair, is part of the Sunnah.

It is based on a hadith from Abu Hurairah that reported Prophet Muhammad SAW saying:

There are five acts of fitrah, namely circumcision, shaving pubic hair, cutting mustaches, cutting nails, and plucking armpit hair.

This hadith was also mentioned in the Sahih book of Imam Bukhari.

From this hadith, it can be understood that cutting nails or trimming the pubic hair during the day while fasting is permissible and not makruh.

No argument states that these two things can break the fasts. Because self-cleaning activities such as cutting nails regularly can help you maintain good body hygiene, especially in small parts of the body.

In fact, this includes sunnah activities that are very good to do.

List of Things That Can Break Your Fast

It should be understood that fasting is the worship of refraining from everything that can break it, from the sunrise (dawn time) to the sunset (maghrib time).

As explained by Sheikh Ibn Qasim Al Ghazi in the book Fathul Qorib, eight things can break fast, namely as follows:

• Inserting objects into the body through body openings (such as eating and drinking)
• Inserting objects into the rectum or foreskin (such as medicine or other objects)
• Vomiting on purpose
• Having sexual intercourse between husband and wife during the day on Ramadan
• Sperm comes out (intentionally due to skin contact)
• The blood of menstruation and nifas
• Murtad or Apostasy (leaving Islam)

Cutting nails is not included in the action that breaks your fast as nails are part of the human body outside, so it does not harm the oral cavity or others.

Nails in the structure of the human body are also not parts that have an inside (jauf), such as the nose and ears, so cutting them certainly does not affect whether fasting is valid or not. Same thing with cutting pubic hair.

Both are related to human nature (fitrah) and have nothing to do with one’s fasting state.

Rasulullah Shallallahu’ Aaihi Wa Sallam, who took care of his personal hygiene very well, recommends that we cut our nails or shave pubic hair for no more than 40 days.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that it is not true that cutting nails or shaving pubic hair during Sunnah or Ramadan fasting can break the fast because the law rules out that doing both things when fasting is permissible and not prohibited. In fact, doing so is something that is recommended in Islam because it is the nature of Muslims (fitrah) to be clean and pure both physically and spiritually.

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