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What is the meaning of the pardon (al-ʿafw) mentioned in the Maliki school regarding urinary incontinence (sils al-bawl), and does it mean the purity of the urine or the persistence of its impurity with a pardon for its transference, and what rulings result from that concerning the urine touching the body and clothes?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

The meaning of pardoning impurities that are difficult to avoid, according to the Malikis, is that they lose their legal consideration for the person (their body and clothes). So, whatever of these impurities affects them is pardoned for them, and if the substance of the impurity itself is pardoned, there is no need to ask about its transfer to what it touches of the person's body or clothes. Thus, a person with chronic incontinence is pardoned for what affects their body, near and far from the place of discharge, as well as what affects their clothes directly or through contact with urine. What is pardoned of impurities loses its legal consideration for its owner and does not have the ruling of impurity. If the impurities are pardoned for their owner, they are also pardoned for others, because their legal consideration is dropped by religious law. The proof that their impurity status is dropped is their explicit statement that it is recommended to wash off what is excessive of them.

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

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