Nisaa العربية Download
  1. Home
  2. Answers
  3. Prayer and worship

Can I Touch the Mushaf (Qur'an) During Istihadah (Irregular Bleeding)?

Yes. Istihadah does not close the Mushaf to her the way hayd, nifas or Janabah do. The restriction in those three states rests on hadath akbar, major ritual impurity, and istihadah is not that. It is treated as a continuous minor hadath, comparable to chronic incontinence, the same characterisation that already keeps her prayer, her fasting and the mosque open to her without a pause.

The evidence behind the restriction itself is the ayah (interpretation of the meaning): "None shall touch it except the purified." [Al-Waqiah 56:79], together with the letter the Prophet (Salla Allahu 'Alayhi Wa Sallam) sent to the people of Yemen through 'Amr ibn Hazm, which stated: "No one should touch the Qur'an except one who is pure." (Narrated by Malik in Al-Muwatta. The chain has a gap, but al-Shafi'i and later scholars such as Ibn 'Abd al-Barr accepted it as supported by other routes, and it is what the majority of scholars act on.) Unlike the mosque, which closes only for hadath akbar, touching the Mushaf is held by the majority to require taharah from hadath asghar too, ordinary wudu, not merely freedom from hayd or Janabah. That is why the mosque and the Mushaf do not open to her at the same moment, even though both close to hayd and Janabah for the same underlying reason.

What actually opens the Mushaf to her

The same pad-and-wudu routine that governs her prayer governs this too. Once she has made wudu within a prayer's time, following the hadith of Fatimah bint Abi Hubaysh (Radi'Allahu Anha), "then perform Wudu for every prayer, until that time comes" (Narrated by Abu Dawud and al-Nasai), she holds valid taharah for the whole of that window, and that taharah covers touching the Mushaf the same way it covers the prayer itself. See can you pray during istihadah for the full routine, including where the four madhabs differ on what actually invalidates this wudu.

Between prayer times, before she has renewed her wudu, she is simply a person without wudu, and the ordinary rule for anyone without wudu applies: the Arabic text of the Mushaf stays out of reach until wudu is made again. This is not a restriction istihadah adds on top of the ordinary rule. It is the ordinary rule, the same one that applies to anyone, man or woman, bleeding or not, who has not yet purified.

What still reaches her regardless

Touching the Mushaf through something separate from it, its cover, the bag it is carried in, a sleeve, is agreed across the schools to be permitted in any state, istihadah included, in exactly the same way it is for hayd. She is touching the barrier, not the Mushaf itself, so wudu does not enter into it at all.

A Qur'an translation with no Arabic text splits the four madhabs the same way it does for hayd. The Hanafi school treats the Qur'an as its wording and its meaning together, so a translation still counts as Qur'an and needs the same taharah. The Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali schools hold that the Qur'an's inimitability is specifically in its Arabic wording, so a translation on its own, without the Arabic, may be touched without purification.

A phone, tablet or Qur'an app follows the same reasoning contemporary scholars apply to hayd: what the evidence restricts is touching a Mushaf, and a screen showing changeable pixels is not one, since it is glass and plastic rather than the fixed Arabic text a Mushaf is defined by. Islamweb's fatwa council put it in exactly those terms (fatwa no. 465004, 17 Rabi al-Awwal 1444 / 12 October 2022): purification is not required to hold the device, open the app, or scroll through it. This reaches her regardless of wudu, the same way it reaches anyone in hayd, nifas or Janabah.

If bleeding continues past nifas's recognised maximum, forty days on the predominant view, up to sixty for the Maliki and Shafi'i schools, it is reclassified as istihadah, and everything above applies from that point on rather than nifas's own stricter rule. If what you are bleeding might actually be hayd rather than istihadah, telling the two apart first is what decides whether any of this applies to you at all.