It also includes whatever is rendered impure by a dog’s lapping, urine, droppings, saliva, or sweat.

The evidence for this is the Prophet’s ﷺ statement: “When the dog laps…” The definite article here denotes the reality of the genus, or the entirety of the genus; in either case, it indicates generality.

If it is said: Does this not entail hardship with respect to dogs that it is permissible to keep?

The answer is: Yes, but this hardship is removed by keeping the dog away from vessels in use, by assigning it separate vessels for its food and drink. We should not exclude it from the general wording, for if we did, we would exclude most of what the wording indicates, and this is not a sound method of inference.

Some of the Zahiris said: This ruling applies when a dog laps from a vessel; as for its urine and droppings, they are like other impurities (1), because they do not accept analogy.

The majority of jurists said: Its droppings and urine are like its lapping; indeed, they are even more foul (2). The Prophet ﷺ specifically mentioned lapping because that is what commonly occurs: a dog does not generally urinate or defecate in vessels, but merely laps from them. What is mentioned on account of what commonly occurs carries no contrary implication, and the ruling is not restricted to it.

Some later scholars gave preference to the Zahiri position (3), not because of adherence to the apparent wording, but because analogy is inapplicable: one of the conditions of analogy is that the subsidiary case be equal to the original case in its effective cause, so that it may be equal to it in its ruling,