As for their disagreement over large and small quantities of blood, its source is their dispute about whether a qualified text should restrict an unqualified one, or an unqualified text should override a qualified one. Blood is prohibited in absolute terms in the Almighty’s words:
“Forbidden to you are carrion, blood, and the flesh of swine.” (5:3)
Yet it is mentioned in a restricted form in His words:
“Say: I do not find, in what has been revealed to me, anything forbidden to one who eats thereof, save carrion, or blood that has been poured forth, or swine-flesh.” (6:145)
Whoever lets the qualified verse govern the unqualified verse—this is the majority—maintains that only flowing blood is impure and forbidden. Whoever allows the unqualified verse to prevail, reasoning that it contains an addition, holds that both flowing blood (a large amount) and non-flowing blood (a small amount) are forbidden, supporting this by the principle that whatever is intrinsically impure cannot be partly permitted and partly forbidden.
Issue Five
The scholars are unanimous that human urine and feces are impure, except for the urine of an unweaned male infant. They differ, however, with respect to other animals. Al-Shāfiʿī and Abū Ḥanīfah consider the excreta of every animal impure. Another group holds, without qualification, that the urine and dung of all animals are pure. A third group links the ruling on urine and dung to the ruling on the animal’s flesh: if its meat is prohibited, its urine and dung are impure and forbidden; if its meat is lawful, they are pure—except for animals that feed on filth; and if its meat is merely disliked, its excreta are likewise disliked. This is Mālik’s position, just as Abū Ḥanīfah adopted the same view concerning water left over after animals drink.
Their divergence rests on two factors. First, they differ in how they understand (1) the permission to pray in sheepfolds, (2) the Prophet’s—peace and blessings be upon him—allowance for the ʿUrayniyyīn to drink camel urine and milk, and (3) the prohibition of praying in camel pens. Second, they differ over drawing an analogy between other animals and human beings. Those who make the analogy, considering it a fortiori reasoning, do not infer from the permission to pray in sheepfolds the purity of sheep dung and urine; they treat that ruling as purely devotional. Those who view the prohibition of praying in camel pens as evidence of impurity—and regard the Prophet’s concession to the ʿUrayniyyīn as a medicinal exception—conclude that every form of dung and urine is impure. By contrast, those who understand the permission to pray in sheepfolds and the report of the ʿUrayniyyīn to signify purity, and who regard the prohibition of praying in camel pens as an act of worship or for some reason other than impurity, distinguish between humans and livestock: human excreta are naturally repulsive, whereas livestock excreta are not. Accordingly, they let the ruling on excreta follow the ruling on the animal’s meat. Allah knows best.