anger is from Satan, and Satan is from fire. Fire is extinguished only with water, so when one of you becomes angry, let him perform ablution.” Likewise, overpowering desire is from Satan and fire, and ablution extinguishes it. It also extinguishes the heat of anger. Performing ablution for this reason is recommended.

Likewise, his command to perform ablution after eating food touched by fire is a recommendation: since food touched by fire enters the body, one should perform ablution, for fire is extinguished with water. Nothing in the texts indicates that this command was abrogated. Rather, the texts indicate that it is not obligatory. The view that ablution is recommended is among the most balanced positions, between the view that makes it obligatory and the view that considers it abrogated. This is one of the two views in the school of Ahmad and others.

By the same method, we also know that the urine and dung of animals whose meat is lawful to eat are not ritually impure. These are things people commonly encounter. Those people kept camels and sheep, and would sit and pray in their enclosures, which were full of their droppings. Had these places been comparable to privies, they would have counted as latrines, and the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) would have commanded them to avoid them, not to soil their bodies or clothes with their droppings, and not to pray there.

How could that be, when authentic hadiths establish that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and his Companions used to pray in sheep pens, and that he commanded prayer in sheep pens and forbade