with either of them, for they are provisions for your brothers among the jinn.”

The point of evidence is that “the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, forbade cleansing oneself with bones and dung,” which are provisions for our brothers among the jinn and fodder for their animals. It is clear that he forbade this only so that we would not render these things impure for them. Hence, the jurists inferred that it is likewise impermissible to cleanse oneself with human food.

Moreover, numerous reports convey this prohibition and sternly warn against it, to the point that he said:

“Whoever wears a bowstring around his neck or cleanses himself with a bone or dung, Muhammad disavows him.”

It is clear that if dung were inherently impure, cleansing oneself with it would not render it impure. There would then be no distinction between dung used for cleansing and dung not used for that purpose. Yet this would erase a distinction made by the Sunnah.

Furthermore, if dung were impure, it would not be suitable as fodder for the animals of believing people, since their animals would thereby become filth-fed. If it were permissible for their animals to become filth-fed, it would also be permissible to feed them human excrement and animal dung, and there would then be no distinction.

Moreover, when he assigned them what human beings leave behind as provisions, and assigned their animals the dung left by human beings’ animals as fodder, he stipulated that their food should be every bone over which Allah’s name had been mentioned. A corresponding condition must therefore apply to their animals’ fodder: namely, purity. This makes clear to you that his words in the hadith of Ibn Masʿūd, when the latter brought him two stones