3 – Eating their meat and drinking their milk is prohibited, for they are rijs (filth), and rijs is something impure and defiling.

4 – Because the ḥadith restricts the ruling to domestic donkeys, it implicitly affirms the purity and permissibility of wild donkeys, for they are lawful game.

5 – The Prophet’s rationale—“for they are rijs”—shows that anything intrinsically impure is forbidden, both because of the harm it poses to health and because it is repugnant by nature.

6 – In the phrase yanhayānikum (“He forbids you”) the dual pronoun refers to Allah the Exalted and to His Messenger ﷺ. Similar usage occurs in several texts, such as: “that Allah and His Messenger be dearer to him than anything else” (al-Bukhārī 16; Muslim 43). As for the Prophet’s rebuke to the preacher who said, “Whoever obeys Allah and His Messenger has been guided, and whoever disobeys them has gone astray,” whereupon he said, “What a wretched preacher you are!” (Muslim 870), the scholars explain that sermons should be lengthened and elaborated so the message is conveyed completely.

Disagreement among the scholars

The scholars unanimously agree that the dung, urine, blood, and flesh of the domestic donkey and the mule are impure, because the Prophet ﷺ said of the donkey, “It is filth,” and said of its dung, “It is filth.”

They differ, however, regarding its body, its perspiration, its mouth and the saliva or leftover water that comes from it, and its nose and any mucus that issues from it—are these impure or pure?

• The view most commonly reported from Imām Aḥmad is that they are impure, a position followed by his students. Al-Muqniʿ and al-Inṣāf state: “The mule and the domestic donkey are impure; this is the madhhab, and the majority of followers adhere to it.” Ibn al-Jawzī said: “This is the correct position of the school.”

• Imāms Mālik and al-Shāfiʿī held that they are pure. This is also one narration from Imām Aḥmad, chosen by some of his associates, among them al-Muwaffaq. Al-Mughnī says: “The sound view is that the mule and the donkey are pure.” Al-Inṣāf adds: “This, I say, is the correct opinion and the one with the stronger evidence.”

• The same opinion has also been adopted by some of our contemporary scholars: