If someone were to say:

“We scrupulously avoid this because it is disputed. Some Iraqi scholars maintain that when impurity falls into water, it renders it impure, even if the water is abundant, unless it is so extensive that the impurity cannot spread throughout it. Their criterion is that movement at one end should not cause movement at the other. They hold two views on whether the relevant movement is that of someone performing ablution or someone taking a ritual bath. Some have specified dimensions of ten cubits by ten cubits. They cite the Prophet’s words (peace and blessings be upon him):

‘None of you should urinate in stagnant water and then bathe using its water.’

“They then say that if a well becomes impure, a specified number of bucketfuls must be drawn from it for certain kinds of impurity, while for others the entire well must be drained. Some of their theologians have even held that the well must be filled in. Does this disagreement not, then, cast doubt on water into which impurity has fallen?”

Such a person would be told:

Disagreement gives rise to doubt only when the Sunnah of Allah’s Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) has not become clear. But once we know that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) permitted something, that he disapproved of our scrupulously avoiding what he himself allowed, and that he told us:

“Allah loves His concessions to be accepted just as He dislikes disobedience to Him”—

reported by Ahmad and by Ibn Khuzaymah in his Sahīh—then, if we scrupulously avoid it, we disobey Allah’s Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). Allah and His Messenger have a greater right that we should seek to please them. We may not anger Allah’s Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) because of a doubt that has occurred to some scholars, as happened in the year of al-Hudaybiyyah. If we opened this door, we would consider it disliked for someone who had sent a sacrificial animal ahead to avail himself of