Likewise, what is the answer to the Prophet’s prohibition against praying in camel resting places? This too indicates that they are impure.

The answer to Ibn ʿAbbās’s hadith is that his words, “from urine,” mean his own urine. The definite article refers to something mentally understood, and the evidence for this is that one wording of the hadith in al-Bukhari states: “As for one of them, he did not take precautions against his own urine” (1). This is an explicit statement, so the first wording is to be understood accordingly.

As for the prohibition against praying in camel resting places, the reason for the prohibition is not impurity. Had impurity been the reason, there would have been no difference between camels and sheep; rather, the reason is something else.

It has been said that this ruling is devotional in nature—that is, its underlying reason is unknown (2).

It has also been said that, if one prays in their resting places, it is feared that the camels may return to that place while he is praying and disrupt his prayer because of their large bodies, unlike sheep (3). Another view is that they were created from devils (855), as related in the hadith (4). This does not mean that the substance from which they were created was devils; rather, it means that they were created with a devilish nature. This is like Allah’s saying: “Man was created of haste” [al-Anbiyaʾ: 37]. It does not mean that the material of his creation was haste; rather, this is his nature, as Allah says: “Man is ever hasty” [al-Isrāʾ: 11].