Back to search

Is expiation for an oath (kaffarat yamin) or repentance required for someone who repeatedly broke her vow to God to stop listening to music and entering certain websites, and if it is expiation, is it a single one or multiple?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

Scholars have differed regarding one who makes a covenant with Allah to do or refrain from something. The preponderant view is that it is a vow and an oath, and expiation becomes obligatory upon breaching it. If the word "covenant" is repeated for a single matter, the oath is dissolved by the first breach, and only one expiation is required, unless the wording necessitates repetition. However, if one covenanted to refrain from multiple things, then expiation is due for each thing in which one broke the covenant. Therefore, the questioner is obligated to offer an expiation for an oath. The expiation is repeated if the things she covenanted with Allah to abandon, and then did, are multiple, but it is not repeated if the thing she covenanted to abandon was a single matter.

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

Read the full answer on Ftawy