Issue Four

Does prohibition arise from milk that reaches the throat by force-feeding (al-wajūr), by being poured drop by drop (al-ladūd), or, in general, by any means other than normal suckling?

Mālik maintained that both force-feeding and ladūd do establish the prohibition.
ʿAṭāʾ and Dāwūd held that they do not.

The root of their disagreement is whether the decisive factor is simply that the milk reaches the stomach, whatever the means, or that it reaches it by the customary mode of suckling. Whoever requires the customary mode—since only that is properly called “suckling”—says that force-feeding and ladūd are not prohibitive; whoever is satisfied with the mere arrival of milk in the body says that they are.

Issue Five

Is it a condition for prohibitive milk, once it reaches the throat, that it be unmixed with anything else? Here, too, the scholars disagreed.

Ibn al-Qāsim said: If the milk has been absorbed into water or another liquid and is then given to the child, no prohibition results. Abū Ḥanīfah and his companions said the same.

Al-Shāfiʿī, Ibn Ḥabīb, Muṭarrif, and Ibn al-Mājishūn—among Mālik’s followers—ruled that it does create the prohibition, just as if the milk were administered alone or mixed in a way that left its substance visible.

Their divergence turns on whether milk retains its prohibitive ruling after being mixed with something else, or whether that ruling disappears—by analogy with impurity that loses its effect when diluted by pure matter. The operative principle is whether the name “milk” still applies to the mixture, much as jurists ask whether a liquid remains “water” after another pure substance is added to it.

Issue Six

Is it necessary for the milk to reach the throat at all? This seems to underlie their disagreement about milk introduced by nasal insufflation (saʿūṭ) or rectal infusion (ḥuqnah). Their dispute likely stems from uncertainty over whether milk introduced through those organs actually reaches the digestive tract.

Issue Seven

Does the man whose semen produced the milk—namely, the woman’s husband—become a father to the nursling, so that all the marital prohibitions that apply between lineage fathers and children apply here as well? This is what the jurists call “the milk of the sire (laban al-faḥl).”

Mālik, Abū Ḥanīfah, al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad, al-Awzāʿī, and al-Thawrī said: The milk of the sire does establish the prohibition.

Another group said: The milk of the sire does not. The first view is reported from ʿAlī and Ibn ʿAbbās; the second from ʿĀʾishah, Ibn al-Zubayr, and Ibn ʿUmar.

The disagreement stems from the apparent conflict between the plain sense of the Qur’ānic verse on suckling and the well-known ḥadīth of ʿĀʾishah. She related:

“Aflah, the brother of Abū Quʿays, came to ask permission to enter after the verse of the veil had been revealed. I refused to admit him and consulted the Messenger of God—may God bless him and grant him peace. He said, ‘He is your uncle; grant him permission.’ I replied, ‘Messenger of God, the woman suckled me, but the man did not!’ He said, ‘He is your uncle; let him enter.’”

Al-Bukhārī, Muslim, and Mālik all transmitted this report.

Whoever regards the ruling in this ḥadīth as an additional legal stipulation beyond what is in the Book—namely, His words, exalted is He: