of scholars, including al-Zuhrī and al-Bukhārī, the compiler of the Sahīh. This has also been cited as a position reported from Mālik. It is likewise the position of Abū Hanīfah, who treated water and other liquids alike both when they come into contact with impurity and when they are used to remove impurity. Regarding the removal of impurity, this is also a position reported from Ahmad. However, Abū Hanīfah held that mere contact renders them impure, whereas the majority of the leading scholars disagreed: they did not consider mere contact to render a large quantity impure, though they differed over a small quantity.

Some jurists considered the evidence to indicate that when something impure falls into something pure, it renders it impure. Others said that it does so only when its effect becomes apparent. If, however, it is wholly absorbed into the other substance and transformed, there are no grounds for declaring that substance impure. This is comparable to wine turning into vinegar without deliberate human action: it is then pure and lawful by agreement of the leading scholars. His position regarding water, however, is well known. There is evidence supporting this, which we have set out at length elsewhere.

There is no evidence that it is impure, either in the Book of Allah or in the Sunnah of His Messenger. The principal argument of those who declared it impure is their reliance on a hadith narrated by Abū Dāwūd and others from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace: “He was asked about a mouse that had fallen into clarified butter and replied: ‘If it is solid, discard the mouse and whatever surrounds it, and eat your clarified butter. But if it is liquid, do not