Exempted, Not Excluded: What Ramadan Still Asks of a Menstruating Woman

On the road to the Farewell Hajj, ʿĀʾishah (may Allah be pleased with her) began her period at a place called Sarif, days before the rites began. She wept, and when the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) found her in tears and asked what was wrong, she said she wished she had never made the journey that year. His answer did not comfort her by minimising what had happened — it named it as something decreed:

هَذَا شَيْءٌ كتبه عَلَى بَنَاتِ آدَمَ. افْعَلِي مَا يَفْعَلُ الْحَاجُّ غَيْرَ أَنْ لَا تَطُوفِي بِالْبَيْتِ حَتَّى تَطْهُرِي

This is a thing decreed for the daughters of Adam. Do what the pilgrim does, except do not circle the House until you are pure.

— Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, printed page 2/873 of , hadith 1211, narrated from ʿĀʾishah.

Ramaḍān puts the same question to every woman who bleeds in it, and it is worth answering plainly: what does menstruation actually take away, what does it leave standing, and — because this is the one place the scholars genuinely part ways — what is disputed rather than settled? Keeping those three apart matters more than simply getting through the month.

Allah did not leave the subject to inference. He answered a direct question about it:

وَيَسْـَٔلُونَكَ عَنِ ٱلْمَحِيضِ ۖ قُلْ هُوَ أَذًى فَٱعْتَزِلُوا۟ ٱلنِّسَآءَ فِى ٱلْمَحِيضِ ۖ وَلَا تَقْرَبُوهُنَّ حَتَّىٰ يَطْهُرْنَ ۖ فَإِذَا تَطَهَّرْنَ فَأْتُوهُنَّ مِنْ حَيْثُ أَمَرَكُمُ ٱللَّهُ ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يُحِبُّ ٱلتَّوَّٰبِينَ وَيُحِبُّ ٱلْمُتَطَهِّرِينَ

They ask you about menstruation. Say, “It is a hurt, so keep away from wives during menstruation, and do not approach them until they are pure. And when they have purified themselves, then come to them as Allah has commanded you.” Indeed, Allah loves those who constantly turn to Him and loves those who purify themselves.

— Sūrat al-Baqarah, 2:222

Menstruation is called an adhā — a hurt, a discomfort — never a moral failing and never a reason to withdraw from worship altogether. The verse regulates one specific matter, intimacy between spouses, and stops there. Everything else it touches in a woman’s worship — what she prays, what she recites, what she fasts — is worked out from the Sunnah, and worked out differently depending on which act is in question.

Fasting and prayer are both lifted from a menstruating woman, and it is easy to assume the two work the same way. They do not. A woman named Muʿādhah once put the puzzle to ʿĀʾishah directly, and ʿĀʾishah suspected a Khārijite trick behind the question before she answered it:

سَأَلْتُ عَائِشَةَ فَقُلْتُ: مَا بَالُ الْحَائِضِ تَقْضِي الصَّوْمَ وَلَا تَقْضِي الصَّلَاةَ؟ فَقَالَتْ: أَحَرُورِيَّةٌ أَنْتِ؟ قُلْتُ: لَسْتُ بِحَرُورِيَّةٍ. وَلَكِنِّي أَسْأَلُ. قَالَتْ: كَانَ يُصِيبُنَا ذَلِكَ فَنُؤْمَرُ بِقَضَاءِ الصَّوْمِ وَلَا نُؤْمَرُ بقضاء الصلاة

I asked ʿĀʾishah, “Why does the menstruating woman make up the fast but not the prayer?” She said, “Are you a Khārijite?” I said, “I am not — I am only asking.” She said, “That used to happen to us, and we were commanded to make up the fast, but we were not commanded to make up the prayer.”

— Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, printed page 1/265 of , hadith 335, narrated from ʿĀʾishah.

That answer is agreed on across every school: no ṣalāh during the days of bleeding, and none owed once they end; no fasting during those days, but every missed day of Ramaḍān owed back before the next one arrives. None of that is disputed anywhere. What comes next is.

Whether a menstruating woman may recite the Qur’an from memory — without touching a physical copy — is the one question in this whole subject that genuinely divides the schools, and it deserves both sides named rather than one presented as if it were agreed.

The Ḥanafī, Shāfiʿī and Ḥanbalī default is that she may not, reasoning from the same restriction that applies to major ritual impurity. Al-Qudūrī states the Ḥanafī position in exactly these terms, and notes Imam Mālik’s disagreement in the same breath, citing a report from Ibn ʿUmar that neither the menstruating woman nor the one in janābah may recite anything of the Qur’an — see , printed page 1/131.

But that report is weaker than the ruling resting on it. Al-Tirmidhī, who transmitted it, graded it weak himself, and Ibn Mājah’s version fares no better. Al-Ṣaffārīnī records that grading alongside the alternative it left room for: some hold that menstruation does not prevent recitation at all, a position narrated from Mālik and the one Ibn Taymiyyah adopted — adding that if a woman fears she will forget what she has memorised, reciting becomes obligatory for her rather than merely permitted. See , printed page 1/524.

So this is not a strong ḥadīth standing against a loose opinion. It is two readings of one weak report, and which one a school follows comes down to its own default caution, not a settled proof text. A woman who avoids reciting from memory during her period is following the majority position. A woman who does recite — especially to protect something she has memorised — is following Mālik’s school and Ibn Taymiyyah’s stated view, not inventing a leniency for herself. Neither side has closed the question for the other, so follow the guidance you already hold to, or ask a scholar you trust, rather than treating either position as the only one available.

Whichever position a woman follows on reciting from memory, the dispute above is narrow. Listening to the Qur’an, reading it from a translation, following along as someone else recites, and studying tafsīr are open to her without disagreement from any school. ʿĀʾishah’s own household shows exactly this:

كَانَ يَتَّكِئُ فِي حَجْرِي وَأَنَا حَائِضٌ، ثُمَّ يَقْرَأُ الْقُرْآنَ

He used to recline in my lap while I was menstruating, then recite the Qur’an.

— Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, printed page 1/114 of , hadith 293, narrated from ʿĀʾishah.

If the Prophet (peace be upon him) could rest his head against a menstruating woman while reciting aloud, her nearness to the Qur’an — hearing it, following its meaning, teaching it to someone else — was never in question. What is contested is narrowly her own act of reciting from memory, nothing wider than that.

The days you are not fasting or praying in Ramaḍān are not days off from the month; they are days worship changes shape. A recitation habit can become a listening habit — play a portion of the Qur’an while you cook, follow a translation as the imam leads tarāwīḥ instead of standing in it yourself, or spend the time you would have spent in qiyām reading tafsīr instead. Dhikr and duʿāʾ carry no restriction at all. The tongue that is holding back from reciting can still remember Allah in every other form, whether that is the adhkār you already know by heart or unscripted supplication said quietly while resting through cramps.

The last ten nights are worth planning for specifically, since this is when the exemption most often falls. Wake at your usual hour anyway, make wuḍūʾ, and spend the time in duʿāʾ and istighfār rather than standing prayer — the hour is not wasted just because the form of worship in it changed. And the hours fasting would have taken up are now free for something else entirely: teach a child a sūrah and its story, cook the meal for someone who is fasting, or take over so another woman can pray tarāwīḥ without interruption. None of that needs ritual purity.

There is a wider principle behind all of this, stated by the Prophet (peace be upon him) about illness and travel rather than menstruation specifically — so it is worth citing for exactly what it says, without stretching it further:

إِذَا مَرِضَ الْعَبْدُ، أَوْ سَافَرَ، كُتِبَ لَهُ مِثْلُ مَا كَانَ يَعْمَلُ مُقِيمًا صَحِيحًا

When a servant falls ill or travels, the like of what he used to do while resident and in good health is recorded for him.

— Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, printed page 3/1092 of , hadith 2834, narrated from Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī.

That was said about a habitual, voluntary practice interrupted by a valid excuse — it is not a claim that the prayer and fasting a menstruating woman is exempted from are credited to her as if she had performed them. What it does establish, plainly, is that a valid excuse does not erase a servant’s standing before Allah; it changes what that standing is built from for as long as the excuse lasts. Whatever else this Ramaḍān her period changes, it has not switched off her relationship with Allah for a single hour of it.

May Allah accept the worship offered in every shape it takes this month, and grant every woman reading this ease in her body and steadiness in her heart. If a ruling here differs from what you were taught, ask a scholar you trust rather than taking a blog post as the last word — and if you would like to keep the Qur’an close through the days you are not reciting it yourself, the Quran Gallery reader plays every sūrah aloud with a synced translation running beside it.