Is My Floor Impure If I Clean It While Wearing Pig Skin Shoes?

Answered by Ustadh Tabraze Azam

Question: Assalam alaykum

For a long time I used to clean my floor with a wet mop using the same water for the whole floor.

I have found out that the inner sole of a pair of my shoes was made from pig skin leather.

When I just cleaned the floor of my rooms would the impurity of the shoes render the whole floor of my rooms impure?

Answer: Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah,

No, the floors of your home are not impure, and you don’t need to take any measures to clean them.

There are two issues here:

1. It is generally impermissible to benefit from any part of a pig. If you own some footwear containing some kind of inner sole or lining made of pig leather, that area of the shoe would be ritually filthy, yet not the entire shoe.

2. The mere presence of something ritually filthy doesn’t make another thing filthy. Rather, there are principles dictating filth transfer, and in this case, a wet foot coming into contact with a dry sole would not affect the purity of the foot as long as the traces of impurity were not manifest [on the foot].

[Shurunbulali, Maraqi al-Falah]

Please also see: Filth, Carpets and Misgivings and: A Reader on Waswasa (Baseless Misgivings)

And Allah Most High alone knows best.

wassalam,
[Ustadh] Tabraze Azam

Checked and Approved by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

Ustadh Tabraze Azam holds a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Leicester, where he also served as the President of the Islamic Society. He memorised the entire Qur’an in his hometown of Ipswich at the tender age of sixteen, and has since studied the Islamic Sciences in traditional settings in the UK, Jordan and Turkey. He is currently pursuing advanced studies in Jordan, where he is presently based with his family.