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Do the days of not praying have to be made up if it was due to ignorance in distinguishing menstrual blood from Istiḥāḍa blood as a result of using birth control pills?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

If the bleeding continues for more than fifteen days, you are considered to be in a state of istihadah (non-menstrual vaginal bleeding), and you must make up the prayers you missed during those days, thinking they were due to menstruation. The method of making them up is to pray on a single day as many of those missed prayers as you can, in order. If you have a regular habit (period), then consider the days of your habit as menstruation and whatever exceeds that as istihadah. If you do not have a regular habit, then act according to discrimination (differentiating between menstrual blood and istihadah blood). If you cannot differentiate, then act according to the habit of most women in your family. However, if the bleeding stops before fifteen days, then whatever exceeds your regular habit is considered menstruation and does not require making up prayers.

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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