Feeding the child, carrying the child

This lesson asks you to analyse developments across the lifespan, such as pregnancy, lactation and infancy, to see how they affect nutritional needs. The museum offers legal texts about infant feeding and about fasting in pregnancy and nursing, not nutrition science; your class brings the science. Neither text is evidence about nutritional needs; the lesson uses them as examples of how a community's rules respond to a life stage. The fatwa does not say who judges whether harm is feared. This is the history of a ruling, not medical advice; a pregnant or nursing person should ask her doctor. ¹

Note who is named as having a duty in the first text and what the second text says a woman should weigh. Then ask what a nutritionist would need to know that neither text says.

Read the answer of Jordan's General Iftaa Department on fasting while pregnant or nursing slowly: it is a legal answer, not medical guidance. The questioner asked whether a pregnant or nursing woman should fast ². The Department answered that fasting is obligatory for a pregnant or nursing woman, but if she fears harm that cannot normally be borne, to herself or to herself and the child, she breaks the fast and owes only making it up ². It said that if she breaks the fast out of fear for the foetus or baby alone, she owes the fidya in addition to making it up, because only the child benefited from breaking the fast ². It explained that the fidya is feeding one poor person for each day not fasted ². The Department published the fatwa as no. 4098, dated 26 January 2026 ². The only reason it states for the fidya is that only the child benefited; the text does not say who judges whether harm is feared.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam, in the record of fasting in Ramadan, gives a résumé of the law of fasting in the Shafi'i school, following the treatise of Abu Shuja al-Isfahani, of the fifth Islamic century ³. In it, if pregnant or nursing women fear danger from fasting, breaking the fast is obligatory for them, and making up the days is obligatory too ⁴. The article then says Shi'i prescriptions differ from the Sunni ones on some points of detail, and gives as an example that pregnant women are excused only in the final phase of pregnancy ⁴. The first view is the Shafi'i school's as the article reports it; the second is what it reports of the Shi'i rules. The museum attributes each and decides nothing, and neither is offered as something to act on.

A fatwa is a text a body published in answer to a question, so it witnesses what the Department answered in no. 4098 on its date ²; the museum records it as a historical document attributed to the body that issued it, and issues no ruling ². The Encyclopaedia of Islam follows a treatise of the fifth Islamic century for the Shafi'i law ³, and the museum's record reports it as the article does and rules on nothing ³. Sha'rawi on nursing is a commentary on a verse of the Qur'an, so it is one commentator's reading ⁵. None of these texts tells what fasting or nursing does in the body: they are statements of what was ruled and what was read.

For the fidya owed when the fear is for the child alone, the Department gives the reason that only the child benefited ². Sha'rawi places maintenance and clothing on the one to whom the child is born, because the child is attributed to the father ⁶. How does the reason each text gives show who it treats as responsible for the child or as the one who benefits, and why do the two texts differ in this?

• Breastfeeding and weaning: Sha'rawi's reading of maintenance, weaning by consent and the child's claim on both parents.
• Fasting while pregnant or nursing: the question and the answer as the Department published them.
• Fasting in Ramadan: the Shafi'i résumé of the law of fasting, with its relaxations, and what the article reports of the Shi'i rules.

Read breastfeeding and weaning and fasting while pregnant or nursing. Write two lists: what each text decides, and what nutritional questions it leaves for your class.