It is well known that some who identify with religious learning and devotion consider continual night prayer, daily fasting, and abstention from marriage and other wholesome pleasures superior to this practice. If they have reached this conclusion through independent scholarly judgment, they are excused. But whoever knows the Sunnah yet turns away from it, believing that abandoning it for such practices is better, and that this way is superior to the way of Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him), is not excused. Rather, he falls under the Prophet’s warning:

“Whoever turns away from my Sunnah is not of me.”

In short, independent scholarly judgment and interpretive reasoning constitute a broad field. They may lead someone to believe that something unlawful is lawful—as happened with those who adopted particular interpretations concerning usury through unequal exchange, the disputed varieties of infused drinks, and anal intercourse with women. They may also lead someone to believe that something lawful is unlawful, as in some of the disputed matters we have mentioned, such as eating spiny-tailed lizards and other things. Indeed, someone may even believe it obligatory to kill a person whose life is inviolable, or the reverse.

Although those who exercise independent scholarly judgment may be excused, and their standing in knowledge and religion acknowledged, it is not permissible to abandon what has become clear of the Sunnah and prophetic guidance on account of their interpretations. And Allah knows best.

This also makes clear the answer to their statement: “A person in a state of major ritual impurity may dip his hand into it or immerse himself in it.” For the Sunnah has established that physical impurity does not affect this water; how, then, could major ritual impurity affect it?

The majority of scholars have addressed “the Prophet’s prohibition against a man urinating in standing water and then bathing with it” in several ways.