“When any of you fast utter no bad words, nor raise your voice in strife. If anyone abuse one who is fasting, let him refrain from replying; let him say that he is keeping a fast.” (Mishkāt, book vii. ch. i. pt. 1.)
FATE. [[PREDESTINATION].]
AL-FATḤ (الفتح), “The victory.” The title of the XLVIIIth Sūrah of the Qurʾān, in the first verse of which the word occurs. “Verily We (God) have given thee an obvious victory, that God may pardon thee thy former and later sin.”
Professor Palmer says “Some of the commentators take this to mean sins committed by Muḥammad before his call and after it. Others refer the word to the liaison with the Coptic handmaiden Mary, and to his marriage with Zainab, the wife of his adopted son Zaid.” None of the commentators we have consulted, including al-Baiẓāwī, al-Jalālān, al-Kamālān, and Ḥusain, give the last interpretation. They all say it refers to his sins before and after his call to the Apostleship.
FATHER. In the Sunnī law of inheritance, a father is a sharer in the property of his son or son’s son, taking one-sixth, but if his son die unmarried and without issue, the father is the residuary and takes the whole.
According to the law of qiṣāṣ or retaliation, if a father take the life of his son, he is not to be slain, for the Prophet has said, “Retaliation must not be executed upon the parent for his offspring”; and Abū Ḥanīfah adds, “because as the parent is the efficient cause of his child’s existence, it is not proper that the child should require or be the occasion of his father’s death”; whence it is that a son is forbidden to shoot his father, when in the army of the enemy, or to throw a stone at him, if suffering lapidation for adultery.
In the law of evidence, the testimony of a father for or against his child is not admitted in a court of law.
AL-FĀTIḤAH (الفاتحة). Lit. “The opening one.” The first chapter of the Qurʾān, called also the Sūratu ʾl-Ḥamd, or the “Chapter of Praise.” It is held in great veneration by Muḥammadans, and is used by them very much as the Paternoster is recited by Roman Catholics. It is repeated over sick persons as a means of healing and also recited as an intercession for the souls of the departed, and occurs in each rakʿah of the daily prayer. Muḥammad is related to have said it was the greatest Sūrah in the Qurʾān, and to have called it the Qurʾānu ʾl-ʿAz̤īm, or the “exalted reading.” It is also entitled the Sabʿu ʾl-Mas̤ānī, or the “seven recitals,” as it contains seven verses; also Ummu ʾl-Qurʾān, the “Mother of the Qurʾān.” According to a saying of the Prophet, the fātiḥah was revealed twice; once at Makkah and once at al-Madīnah. The Amīn is always said at the conclusion of this prayer.
The following transliteration of the Arabic of the Fātiḥah into English characters may give some idea of the rhythm in which the Qurʾān is written:—
“Al-ḥamdu li-ʾllāhi Rabbi ʾl-ʿālamīn.