Seadet-i Ebediyye - Endless Bliss Fifth Fascicle

performed only by the deceased person’s wasî or, if he died
intestate, by the inheritor(s), and the money is given not to men of
religion but to the poor.
Today there is next to no place where the service of isqât and
dawr is being performed suitably with Islam. If the deniers of isqât
said that “the isqâts and dawrs being performed today are
incompatible with Islam,” instead of being opposed to isqât and
dawr, they would be doing well, and we would be supporting them;
by saying so, they would both be safe against a great danger and be
serving Islam. Ibn ’Âbidîn explains how to perform isqât and dawr
as prescribed by Islam at the end of the subject about the namâz of
qadâ.
If a person has fâita salât, [that is, prayers of salât that he left to
qadâ because he failed to perform them for some ’udhr], and if he
has still not performed them even with signs though he could have,
it is wâjib for him to enjoin in his will that the isqât should be done
for their kaffârat, when he is about to die. But he does not have to
enjoin the isqât if he has not had the power to perform them.
Likewise, if a musâfir or a sick person who did not fast in
Ramadân-i sherîf dies before having time to make qadâ, he does
not have to enjoin the isqât. Allâhu ta’âlâ will accept the ’udhrs of
such people. [The isqât for a sick person’s kaffârat is performed by
his walî after his death. It is not performed before he dies. It is not
permissible for a living person to have the isqât performed for
himself. It is stated in the Shâfi’î book Anwâr: “It is not wâjib
according to the Shâfi’î Madhhab to give fidya for the prayers of
namâz omitted by a dead Muslim. The fidya given, if any, will not
stand for isqât.” Imâm-i-Birgivî ‘rahmatullâhi ta’âlâ ’alaih’, a
Hanafî scholar, states in his book Jilâ-ul qulûb: If a person owes
debts to Allâhu ta’âlâ or to people it is wâjib for him to say his will
in the presence of two witnesses or to read to them what he has
written. And (to say or write) a will is mustahab for a person
without debts”.
For the isqât of kaffârat, the deceased person’s walî, that is, the
person to whom he has instructed to distribute his property to the
appropriate places, or his heir, gives alms as much as the fitra
amount, that is, half a sâ’ [five hundred and twenty dirhams or
seventeen hundred and fifty grams] of wheat for each prayer of
salât and the same amount for each salât of witr and the same
amount for a day’s fasting for which qadâ is necessary, as fidya to
the poor [or to their deputy], from the third part of this property.
If the deceased person did not enjoin in his will that the isqât of
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