- This sound methodology in issuing fatwas is the very path muftis are required to tread; for to bar the door before the questioner with a verdict of prohibition and to remain silent about matters the people need—when the law offers a lawful alternative they could adopt—only places them in hardship and constriction within a Sharīʿah that Allah has widened for them, or else drives them to venture into what is unlawful.
Scholarly disagreement:
It is related in al-Bukhārī (145) and Muslim (266) from Ibn ʿUmar who said, “One day I climbed up onto the roof of Ḥafṣah’s house and saw the Prophet ﷺ relieving himself facing toward Syria with his back toward the Kaʿbah.” Because of this report the scholars differed:
• Ibn Ḥazm held that facing or turning one’s back to the qiblah while answering the call of nature is absolutely forbidden, whether in the open or inside a building. This view is also reported from Abū Ayyūb, Mujāhid, al-Nakhaʿī, al-Thawrī, Shaykh Taqī al-Dīn (Ibn Taymiyyah), and Ibn al-Qayyim. They argued with the ḥadīth of Abū Ayyūb, maintaining that a verbal ruling is not overridden by a reported action such as that of Ibn ʿUmar, for an action may reflect a special circumstance, forgetfulness, or an excuse, whereas a statement is definitive and admits of no such possibilities.
• ʿUrwah ibn al-Zubayr, Rabīʿah, and Dāwūd held that turning one’s back to the qiblah is permissible without restriction. They based this on the ḥadīth of Ibn ʿUmar in the two Ṣaḥīḥs, taking it as a specific exemption from the report of Abū Ayyūb. Facing the qiblah, however, remains within the general prohibition of Abū Ayyūb’s ḥadīth.
• A third position draws a distinction, allowing it inside a built structure but forbidding it in the open. This is the view of the imams Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad, and Isḥāq, and it is also narrated from Ibn ʿUmar and al-Shaʿbī. They said that this opinion reconciles all the evidences and gives effect to all of them.
Al-Ṣanʿānī remarked, “This view is not far-fetched, for it leaves the ḥadīths of prohibition in their place and likewise the ḥadīths of permissibility.”
I say: Of the three opinions, this is the strongest—and Allah alone grants success.