any impurity. Although this concerns avoiding impurity during prayer, our school likewise has two views on the question of coming into contact with it.

The fourth response:

If we suppose that contamination is predominant, the original presumption and the apparent circumstances may conflict. In such cases, two views frequently arise in the schools of al-Shāfiʿī, Ahmad and others, as with the clothing of unbelievers and similar matters. However, when avoiding contact is difficult—as with street mud—they favour the ruling of ritual purity. Even when such things are deemed impure, a small amount is excused.

The second principle:

Suppose that an impurity has mixed with this water. It is nevertheless flowing water, since it has flowed over the surface of the ground. Scholars hold two views concerning flowing water with which an impurity has mixed.

The first:

It does not become ritually impure unless the impurity changes it. This is the more correct of the two views. It is the position of Mālik and one of the two positions indicated by Ahmad’s express statements. It is also the position of Abū Hanīfah, despite his strict position concerning standing water, and al-Shāfiʿī’s earlier position. The Prophet’s prohibition—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—against urinating in standing water and bathing in it indicates that flowing water is different. It also indicates that neither urinating in flowing water nor bathing in it compromises its ritual purity.

Furthermore, it is ritually pure and has not been changed by impurity, and there is nothing in the scriptural evidence