I owe fasts from Ramadan. What do I actually owe?
Depends only on why you missed. Menstruation or postpartum bleeding: make up the days, one for one, nothing else, by agreement of the schools. Illness or travel: make up the days when able. A permanent condition where fasting isn't medically realistic: no make-up; instead fidya, feeding a poor person per day missed (2026 institutional rates: US$15 per day at FCNA, C$15 at Islamic Relief Canada). Deliberately breaking a fast is its own category, see below. Nothing in this list is designed to trap you; each track matches capacity.
What's the difference between qada, fidya, and kaffara?
Qada is making up a missed day by fasting another day, the default. Fidya is feeding a poor person instead, for those who can't realistically ever make up (chronic illness, frail age). Kaffara is the heavy expiation, fasting sixty consecutive days or feeding sixty poor people, and it attaches to deliberately violating a valid Ramadan fast: all four schools apply it to intercourse during a fasting day, while for deliberately eating or drinking the Hanafi and Maliki schools require it and the Shafi'i and Hanbali schools require only the make-up day plus repentance. If you think you owe kaffara, that's precisely an ask-a-scholar case: ability, sequence, and circumstances all matter.
How do I make up days when I've lost count of years of them?
Estimate honestly, once, that's the actual instruction in the tradition for unknown quantities, not forensic reconstruction. Work out a reasonable per-year number (for menstruation, your typical days per Ramadan), multiply, write it down, and stop recounting. Then pay it down sustainably: winter days are short, one make-up a week is real progress, and pregnant pauses don't void the ledger. If the number triggers panic or endless revision, that's the waswas pattern, a scholar sets your number once, and you never re-derive it again.
Can I fast the six days of Shawwal before finishing my make-ups?
The split: IslamQA and the Hanbali position say make-ups come first and intentions don't combine; a SeekersGuidance Hanafi answer allows one fast to carry both the make-up and Shawwal intentions; and Dar al-Ifta Egypt, with Shafi'i scholars, permits the six before qada (or combined) provided the make-ups happen before next Ramadan, while calling qada-first preferable. So: if your school is settled, follow it; if not, qada-first is the position everyone respects, and a woman with days from menstruation plus a short Shawwal shouldn't carry guilt for choosing among documented positions.
My phone says the white days start today; the mosque says tomorrow. Which is right?
Both, by their own systems, your app is running a calculated calendar (often Umm al-Qura) while your mosque follows its sighting or calculation authority, and they can differ by a day. For voluntary fasts tied to lunar dates, follow the same authority your mosque uses for Ramadan and Eid, and stop switching sources mid-month. The one-day mismatch has no consequences for a voluntary fast made in good faith, this is a consistency question, not a validity crisis. Our calendar guide explains the whole apparatus.
When is fasting actually prohibited?
Both Eid days, always. The three days after Eid al-Adha (the days of tashriq) are prohibited for ordinary fasting per the cited sources, with a narrow classical exception for certain pilgrims in Makkah that has nothing to do with your Tuesday. Singling out Friday alone for a voluntary fast is discouraged in the hadith (pair it with Thursday or Saturday). And anyone whose health genuinely can't carry a fast isn't 'allowed' to break it, they're instructed to.
Summer fasts here run 17+ hours. Do I really fast Yellowknife daylight?
Where day and night still genuinely alternate, the mainstream position is that the fast follows the actual local dawn and sunset, however long, with the full weight of the health exemptions ready when a real risk exists (and 'my doctor said don't' is a real risk, not a loophole; diabetes, medication schedules, and pregnancy are textbook cases for the illness track). For the true extremes, places where twilight never fully ends or the sun barely sets, recognized bodies permit following the nearest city with a distinguishable day or a moderate-latitude schedule; that's a community-level decision your local mosque or a scholar should anchor, not a private improvisation. Fasting yourself into the ER serves no sunnah.
Do I have to do the voluntary fasts to be a good Muslim?
No. Ramadan plus any make-ups is the entire obligation; everything else on this page is invitation. The Prophet ﷺ told companions who overdid it to fast less and sleep more, moderation is in the source material. A convert whose first solo fasting experience is one Monday in November, chosen freely, is doing this exactly right. Add rhythm when you want it, drop it when life squeezes, and let the voluntary stay voluntary, that's what keeps it love instead of debt.
School positions above are presented from their published institutional sources; pregnancy and nursing cases carry real school differences on whether feeding accompanies the make-up, so take your specific case to a scholar. Dollar fidya figures are 2026 institutional rates that reset annually. And medical reality outranks ambition here by design: anyone with diabetes, an eating-disorder history, pregnancy, or medication schedules should build their fasting plan with a clinician and a scholar together, and a fast broken for genuine health reasons was broken correctly.