What Should Someone Having Trouble Praying Due to Urine Leakage Do?

Answered by Shaykh Yusuf Weltch

Question

What advice would you give to someone having trouble praying due to urine leakage?

Answer

In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful and Compassionate

Allah Most High says, “and He has not put upon you in the Religion any undue hardship…” [Qur’an; 22:78]

This verse is clear in establishing a very important principle. Undue hardship must be averted. [Ayni, al-Binaya Sharh al-Hidaya]

For this reason there are dispensations for people with pressing circumstances such as yourself.

An Excused Person

People suffering from dificulties like yours in purification may be excused from certain rulings as a dispensation and a facilitation to perform the prayer.

Becoming an Excused Person

In order to be considered excused the following condition must be met:

An entire prayer time must come and go and you do not find enough time to make wudu and pray due to urine leakage in your case. [Ibn ‘Abidin, Radd al-Muhtar]

Note that the prayer time used to determine such a ruling can be the shortest prayer time such as that between Fajr and sunrise or Maghrib and ‘Isha. Also note that it is not a condition to continuously check yourself for urine, rather reasonable surety of the presence of urine is sufficient.

[Ibn ‘Abidin, Radd al-Muhtar]

Rulings Related to the Excused Person

Once you have met the above condition you are considered excused. This ruling entails the following:

(1) Your wudu is not considered invalid due to urine leakage. However, if you were to do anything else that would invalidate the wudu the would is invalidated. The dispensation only relates to the problem. [Ibn ‘Abidin, Radd al-Muhtar]

(2) Your wudu is considered invalid when each obligatory prayer time exits. This only applies if you’ve had urine leakage prior to the prayer exiting and after a new wudu. If you make a new wudu and do not experience any leakage till the prayer time exits you still have wudu as the dispensation has not been used. [Ibn ‘Abidin, Radd al-Muhtar]

(3) You are excused from the presence of urine on your body and/or clothes during the prayer. If there is no difficulty in washing yourself or clothing before each prayer this is ideal but if the leakage is continuous this may prove to be another hardship thus it is not obligatory. [Ibn ‘Abidin, Radd al-Muhtar]

Until When Is An Excused Person Considered Excused?

Once you are established to be an excused person by meeting the aforementioned condition you will remain to be so until one entire prayer time comes and goes and no leakage whatsoever has occurred. At this point, you will have to act upon the regular rulings of purification.

[Ibn ‘Abidin, Radd al-Muhtar]

We ask Allah Most High to ease your difficulties

Hope this helps

Allah knows best

[Shaykh] Yusuf Weltch
Checked and Approved by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

Shaykh Yusuf Weltch is a teacher of Arabic, Islamic law, and spirituality. After accepting Islam in 2008, he completed four years at the Darul Uloom seminary in New York, where he studied Arabic and the traditional sciences. He then traveled to Tarim, Yemen, where he stayed for three years studying in Dar Al-Mustafa under some of the greatest scholars of our time, including Habib Umar Bin Hafiz, Habib Kadhim al-Saqqaf, and Shaykh Umar al-Khatib. In Tarim, Shaykh Yusuf completed the memorization of the Qur’an and studied beliefs, legal methodology, hadith methodology, Qur’anic exegesis, Islamic history, and several texts on spirituality. He joined the SeekersGuidance faculty in the summer of 2019.