Another indication that the prohibition amounts to absolute unlawfulness is that the Prophet ﷺ used to command that anyone whose breath carried the smell of garlic or onion be expelled from the mosque. Such treatment is clearly not reserved for someone who has merely fallen into a disliked act. For that reason we have said:

“It is obligatory for anyone who is able to remove them from the mosque, based on the ḥadith of ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him). He said: ‘O people, you consume two plants that I deem nothing but foul—this onion and garlic. I saw the Messenger of Allah ﷺ: whenever he detected their odor on a man in the mosque, he would order that he be taken out to al-Baqiʿ. So whoever eats them, let him kill their smell by cooking them thoroughly.’”

This ḥadith was recorded by Muslim, al-Nasaʾi, Ibn Mājah, al-Ṭayālisī, and Aḥmad through the chain of Qatādah, from Sālim ibn Abī al-Jaʿd al-Ghatafānī, from Maʿdān ibn Abī Ṭalḥah al-Yaʿmurī, who reported that ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab said it—and so forth.

Al-Nawawī commented: “It establishes that anyone from whom the odor of garlic or onion (or the like) is detected must be removed from the mosque, and that whoever is able must eliminate the wrongdoing with his own hand.”

Al-Sindī (may Allah have mercy on him) said: “Perhaps the order to send him to al-Baqiʿ signals that he is unfit to keep company with the living and should instead keep company with the dead, who are not harmed by such an odor. Or it may indicate that he has effectively joined the ranks of the dead—those who neither remember Allah nor pray—since he caused himself to be barred from the mosques. It is also possible that they placed him in that direction as a form of discretionary punishment (taʿzīr).”

I say: The outward sense of the command makes expelling them obligatory, and Ibn Ḥazm stated this explicitly as