What Should I Do About Uncontrollable Gas Passing?
Answered by Shaykh Irshaad Sedick
Question
I have constipation due to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Taking ablution (wudu) is challenging for me as my stool doesn’t pass easily, and I often experience gas feelings. Sometimes, I am confident that I release gas, but other times, I am unsure. Since I have a limited 20-minute break at work to perform salah, it becomes challenging to maintain wudu, especially when dealing with wind issues.
If I cannot maintain wudu during this time due to the passing wind, is it necessary to make up (qada) the missed prayer after Maghrib?
Answer
In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful and Compassionate. May Allah alleviate our difficulties and guide us to what pleases Him. Amin.
The rulings below apply if your situation results in uncontrollable or frequent gas passing (flatulence). If you don’t believe the situation is as severe as that, your ablution would not be nullified by any form of uncertainty. You should assume your ablution is intact until you know it has broken. Allah knows best.
How To Manage IBS, Incontinence, Flatulence, and Similar Issues
All symptoms that make it difficult or impossible to maintain a state of purity should be treated with the measures prescribed by Sacred Law for a woman with chronic vaginal bleeding (mustahada).
A woman with chronic vaginal discharge preparing to pray should wash her private parts, apply something absorbent to them and a dressing, and then perform ablution. She may not delay commencing her prayer after this except for preparing to pray, such as clothing her nakedness, awaiting the call to prayer (adhan), or for a group to gather for the prayer. If she delays for other reasons, she must repeat the purification.
She is obliged to wash her private parts, apply a dressing, and perform ablution before each obligatory prayer (though she is entitled, like those mentioned below, to perform as many non-obligatory prayers as she wishes, carry and read the Quran, etc., until the following prayer’s time comes (n: or until her ablution is broken for a different reason) when she must renew the above measures and her ablution). [Keller, Reliance of the Traveler]
Incontinence and Similar Issues
People unable to hold back intermittent drops of urine coming from them must take the same measures as a woman with chronic vaginal discharge. And likewise, for anyone in a state of chronic annulment of ablution, such as continually breaking wind, excrement, or madhy (though washing and applying an absorbent dressing are only obligatory when filth exits.)
If a person knows that drops of urine will not stop until the time for the following prayer comes, then he takes the above measures and performs the prayer at the first of its time. [ibid.]
I pray this is of benefit and that Allah guides us all.
[Shaykh] Irshaad Sedick
Checked and Approved by Shaykh Muhammad Abu Bakr Badhib
Shaykh Irshaad Sedick was raised in South Africa in a traditional Muslim family. He graduated from Dar al-Ulum al-Arabiyyah al-Islamiyyah in Strand, Western Cape, under the guidance of the late world-renowned scholar Shaykh Taha Karaan.
Shaykh Irshaad received Ijaza from many luminaries of the Islamic world, including Shaykh Taha Karaan, Mawlana Yusuf Karaan, and Mawlana Abdul Hafeez Makki, among others.
He is the author of the text “The Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal: A Hujjah or not?” He has served as the Director of the Discover Islam Centre and Al Jeem Foundation. For the last five years till present, he has served as the Khatib of Masjid Ar-Rashideen, Mowbray, Cape Town.
Shaykh Irshaad has thirteen years of teaching experience at some of the leading Islamic institutes in Cape Town). He is currently building an Islamic online learning and media platform called ‘Isnad Academy’ and has completed his Master’s degree in the study of Islam at the University of Johannesburg. He has a keen interest in healthy living and fitness.
