Her Family Members Have Dogs and It Is Difficult to Avoid their Impurity
Fatwa No: 429043

Question

My family memebers love dogs and I have seen dogs lick their hands and clothes.But no matter what, they never purify themselves in the correct manner after that and touch everywhere in the house with wet hands. Because this is hard for me to avoid, I follow the ruling that impurities does not transfer. Is this correct to do?because I have heard that we can't follow a different ruling just because it's easy for us.

Answer

All perfect praise be to Allah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah, and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger.

Firstly, we would like to point out that the previous questions of the dear questioner suggest that she suffers from Waswaas (satanic whisperings) regarding ritual purity, ablution, and articulation points of letters. If this is the case, we would like first to advise her to adhere to Taqwa, ignore such whisperings, and avoid indulging in them any longer. She should also know that the default original state of things is that they are ritually pure, and not that they are impure.

With regard to the transfer of the ritual impurity, if you mean that their clothes or hands become ritually impure because of contact with the dog’s saliva and then you touch their contaminated clothes or hands, you should know that if the ritual impurity on their clothes or hands has dried, it is not transferred to any other dry object, whether it is your hand or anything else. This is the opinion that we adopt here at Islamweb in this regard.

Moreover, jurists did not unanimously agree on the ritual impurity of the dog’s saliva. They held different opinions in this regard; some of them held that it is ritually impure, and this is the view of the majority of the scholars, while others held that it is ritually pure, and this is the opinion of the Maaliki scholars. There is nothing wrong with following this opinion for the one who lives in an environment in which it is difficult for him to avoid contact with dogs. We have mentioned in previous Fataawa that one may follow the easiest among the different scholarly opinions in the event of hardship and inconvenience and that this does not fall under the dispraised following of legal concessions.

For more benefit that impurity is not transferred from a dry body to another dry body that it comes in contact with, please refer to Fataawa 301366, 81546, 350434, 370297, and 427297.

Also, for more benefit on following scholars’ concessions, please refer to Fatwa 365719.

Allah Knows best.

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