Revisitingthe 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 Ramadanthroughout the nights of Ramadan after breaking their fast or after their sleepor 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 restrictionsof Ramadan for the night time.

In this article, the author investigatesif there was any religious directive regarding the said restrictions during the nights of Ramadanprior to therevelation of the verse2:187, 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 beforeand 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 Quran and Ahādīth.