our times when a person wishes to have stool or urine analyzed: he carries it in a bottle while praying. His prayer is then invalid, because he is carrying an impurity that is not excused.

If someone were to say: An objection arises against this explanation from the fact that it is established that the Prophet, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him, carried Umamah, the daughter of Zaynab, the daughter of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him, while he was praying (1), even though the child’s stomach was full of impurities. Indeed, one might object that you yourself carry impurity in your stomach. How do you answer this?

The scholars replied: An impurity within its natural place has no legal ruling; it is not deemed impure until it separates from that place. (2) What is inside a person’s stomach has not yet separated, so it has no legal ruling. This answer is sound. For this reason, some scholars said that if a blood clot in the womb develops into a morsel of flesh and then into a ritually pure living creature, it is not correct to say that it became pure through transformation, even though the well-known position among the jurists is that they make an exception, among things rendered pure through transformation, for a blood clot that becomes a ritually pure living creature. (3)

However, some scholars rejected this exception, saying: The blood clot, while in its natural place in the womb, has no legal ruling. It is neither impure nor pure; rather, it has no ruling. (433) This is based on the principle that a thing in its natural place has no legal ruling.