What If There is a Shortage of Time and One Needs the Toilet?
Hanafi Fiqh
Answered by Mawlana Ilyas Patel
Question
If one took the precautions to pray on time but woke up late, there’s a small amount of time remaining. One needs to use the toilet, and not doing so would find great difficulty maintaining wudu for the prayer. However, using the bathroom would mean that one won’t be able to maintain wudu (e.g., you have urine problems, so after cleaning correctly, you would usually wait 40 minutes so that urine would have stopped by then); what should you do?
Answer
In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful and Compassionate.
I pray you are in good faith and health. Thank you for your question.
We should strive to pray our prescribed prayers at the beginning of the prescribed times with all of the sunna acts included. However, in your case, you should perform your prayer by doing the bare minimum recital and actions of the prayer by doing a quick two sunna and two fard of Fajr prayer. If this is too difficult, perform only the two rakat fard of Fajr.
It is important to note that you should work on performing Istinja’ in the shortest possible time and the same with wudu, too. [Ibn ‘Abidin, Radd al-Muhtar; ‘Ala’uddin Ibn ‘Abidin, al-Hadiyya al-‘Ala’iyya; Tahtawi, Hashiyat al-Tahtawi ‘ala Maraqi al-Falah]
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I pray this helps with your question.
Wassalam,
[Mawlana] Ilyas Patel
Checked and Approved by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani
Mawlana Ilyas Patel is a traditionally-trained scholar who has studied in the UK, India, Pakistan, Syria, Jordan, and Turkey. He started his early education in the UK. He went on to complete the hifz of the Quran in India, then enrolled in an Islamic seminary in the UK, where he studied the secular and ‘Aalimiyya sciences. He then traveled to Karachi, Pakistan. He has been an Imam in Rep of Ireland for several years. He has taught hifz of the Quran, Tajwid, Fiqh, and many other Islamic sciences to children and adults onsite and online extensively in the UK and Ireland. He taught at a local Islamic seminary for 12 years in the UK, where he was a librarian and a teacher of Islamic sciences. He currently resides in the UK with his wife. His interest is a love of books and gardening.
