a dog when the liquid was a small quantity of water, as stated in the hadith. Yet he did not order food or drink from which a dog had lapped to be poured away, and he considered discarding food and drink for such a reason a grave matter. This is because water ordinarily costs nothing, unlike Muslims’ food and drink. Declaring these impure entails hardship, difficulty, and distress that are plain to everyone. As explained earlier, all jurists take the removal of hardship into account in this matter. If they do not deem large quantities of water impure in order to avert hardship, how can they deem comparable quantities of food and drink impure, when the hardship in this case is greater? Perhaps most large quantities of liquid are scarcely ever free of some impurity.

If it is said, “Water removes impurity from other things, so it should be all the more able to keep impurity from itself, unlike other liquids,” the answer is that this can be addressed in several ways.

First: Water removes impurity from other things only because it carries it away from the affected place, and the impurity goes with it, leaving none behind. When impurity falls into water, however, the water remains pure because the impurity undergoes transformation within it, not because the water has removed it from itself.

For this reason, the followers of Abū Hanīfah say that other liquids are like water both in removing impurity and in being rendered impure. That being so, it does not follow from water’s removing impurity when it carries that impurity away that it removes impurity when the impurity remains within it.

Water containing impurity is comparable to the wash-water that drains away from the place being washed.