—namely, Islam, legal accountability, and that it be sleep at night—cannot be derived from the hadith.

Their arguments for deriving these conditions from the hadith are as follows: the words, “one of you,” address Muslims; thus, they make Islam a condition. And the words, “one of you,” are addressed only to one who is legally accountable.

His words, “spent the night,” indicate that spending the night can only occur at night.

They also stipulate that the sleep must invalidate ablution, based on the words, “for one of you does not know.” As for light sleep, a person remains aware of himself, so it does not matter.

It may be said in response: the hand of a disbeliever and that of a child who has not reached the age of discernment are even more deserving of having an effect.

The sum of their position is that, if all the conditions they mentioned are met and he immerses his hand in the water before washing it three times, the water remains pure but ceases to be purifying.

The correct view is that it remains purifying, though he sins by violating the prohibition, since he immersed it before washing it three times.

Because of the weakness of this view, they said: if a person finds no other water, he should use it and then perform dry ablution as a precaution (1). Thus, they obligate two forms of purification upon him. But where is this obligation in the Book of Allah or the sunnah of His Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him?! What is obligatory is to use either water or earth. Yet, because they recognize the weakness of the view that water can pass from being purifying to merely pure, they say that he should use it and perform dry ablution.