- The Prophet ﷺ said: “Is it not the case that when she menstruates, she neither prays nor fasts?” (1) This woman’s menstruation has ended.
Benefit: The sign of purity is known to women: it is a white discharge that appears when menstruation has ceased. Some women do not have this discharge, and remain until their next menstrual period without seeing it. The sign of their purity, then, is that when one of them inserts a piece of white cotton into the place from which menstrual blood emerges and then removes it without its having changed color, this is a sign of her purity.
His statement, “Whatever returns during it, she observes”: that is, whatever returns within her established pattern after it has ceased, she observes as menstruation without requiring repetition, because the established pattern has already been confirmed and the blood has now returned within that same pattern.
For example, her established pattern is six days. On the fourth day, the blood ceases and she becomes completely pure; then on the sixth day, the blood returns. She must observe the sixth day as menstruation because it falls within the time of her established pattern. But if it does not return until the seventh day, she does not observe it as menstruation, because it falls outside her established pattern. It has previously been mentioned that if the established pattern increases, it is not menstruation unless it recurs three times; and the stronger view on this has already been stated. (2)
His statement, “and yellowish and turbid discharge”: yellowish and turbid discharge are two fluids that emerge from a woman, sometimes before menstruation and sometimes after it.
Yellowish and turbid discharge during the time of the established pattern are menstruation, ...........
Yellowish discharge is yellow fluid, like fluid from wounds.
Turbid discharge is fluid mixed with redness, and it is sometimes mixed with red streaks.