He went to extremes, supposing that the label “wash-water” applied to it more aptly than the word “water” itself, even though it is established that the Prophet’s Companions—peace and blessings be upon him—used to vie with one another for the remainder of his ablution. Inevitably, some of the used water would fall back into the vessel that still held the rest. In short, it is still plain water, for in most cases none of its properties are altered by the grime of the limbs washed with it. If one of its qualities does change, it takes the ruling of water whose characteristics have been modified by a pure substance, though people instinctively find this form of water more distasteful; this is the basis for those who judged it disliked. As for the one who claimed it is impure, he has no proof.

Fourth Issue. The scholars unanimously agree that the leftover water of Muslims and of domesticated livestock is pure, yet they held widely divergent views about everything else. Some maintained that the leftover of every animal is pure. Others excluded only the pig—both views are related from Mālik. A third group excluded both pig and dog; this is the school of al-Shāfiʿī. A fourth group excluded all beasts of prey in general; this is the opinion of Ibn al-Qāsim. Still others argued that the ruling on an animal’s leftover follows the ruling on its meat: if the meat is forbidden, the leftover is impure; if the meat is disliked, the leftover is disliked; and if the meat is lawful, the leftover is pure.

As for the leftover water of a polytheist, one view declares it impure; another deems it merely disliked when he habitually drinks wine—this is Ibn al-Qāsim’s position, which he also applies to the leftover of all animals that typically do not avoid filth, such as free-range chickens, dung-eating camels, and stray dogs.

Their disagreement rests on three considerations: (1) analogy’s opposition to the apparent sense of the Qurʾān; (2) its opposition to the plain meaning of the transmitted reports; and (3) the mutual conflict among those reports themselves.

Analogy proceeds as follows: since death without proper slaughter is, by Sacred Law, the cause of an animal’s intrinsic impurity, life must therefore be the cause of its intrinsic purity. Consequently every living being is pure in itself, and whatever is pure in itself renders its leftover water pure.

The outward sense of the Qurʾān, however, overrides this analogy in the cases of the pig and the polytheist. God Most High says of the pig, “for it is filth” (6:145). Whatever is intrinsically vile is, by definition, intrinsically impure; hence some scholars excluded nothing but the living pig. Those who did not exclude it interpreted the word “filth” as mere censure rather than a declaration of intrinsic impurity.

As for the polytheist, God Most High says, “Indeed the polytheists are unclean” (9:28); so whoever took this