God's debt (dayn Allah): obligations owed to God that remain in the liability

God's debt is a right of God that stays in the obligated person's liability with no human claimant: vows, expiations, zakat of fast-breaking, pilgrimage and fasting. It must be made up. ¹ The jurists rely on the report of the woman who asked about her dead mother's vow of pilgrimage, and on the saying that God's debt has the better claim to be discharged. ²

A time-bound bodily act that passes before it is performed, such as prayer or fasting, becomes a debt; so does a due sum of money that is destroyed after it falls due, such as zakat. ^{3 4} When the person could not perform it when it fell due, the rules differ by kind: zakat of fast-breaking does not become a debt, while the penalty for killing game and the ransom for shaving in pilgrimage do, and the expiations for intercourse in Ramadan, zihar and killing are disputed. ⁴

Paying a financial debt to God, such as zakat or expiation, may be done by a proxy by agreement. Bodily acts such as prayer and fasting may not be done by a proxy for the living. ⁵ After death the schools differ: the Hanafis and Malikis do not make up prayers or fasts for the dead, and the Hanafis allow a ransom from a third of the estate if the dead person bequeathed it; the Shafi'is in their older view and the Hanbalis allow a fast for the dead in the case of a vow, and the Hanbalis allow the pilgrimage to be made from his property. ^{5 6}

The Shafi'is and Hanbalis hold that God's debt binds the estate of the dead and is paid from it whether or not he bequeathed it; the Hanafis hold that it binds the estate only by bequest. ⁷ On whether God's debt blocks zakat the schools differ: the Hanafis and the sounder Shafi'i view say it does not, the Hanbalis say it does, and the Hanafis and Malikis separate zakat debt from other debts. ^{7 8}

Hardship lifts the obligation, as with a menstruating or postnatal woman who makes up no prayers, and a person unconscious for a day and a night or less must make up his prayers in the Hanafi view. ¹⁰ It lapses through inability to make up the act, through loss of zakat property after it fell due (disputed), and through apostasy in the Hanafi and Maliki views but not in the Shafi'i. ^{10 11 9} At death it lapses for the Hanafis unless bequeathed, and it does not lapse for the Shafi'is and Hanbalis, who take it from the estate. ^{9 12}