Full Lecture Transcript (Cleaned)
The Question — 0:00
Sister Nadia from South Africa has been taught by her local scholars that she should not recite the Quran during her monthly cycle. But she is memorizing the Quran and her cycle sometimes lasts more than a week — meaning she loses roughly one-third of every month. She has seen fatwas online from scholars in other countries saying women can recite Quran during menses. Who is right?
Yasir Qadhi begins with a general principle: when a Muslim's local scholarly consensus is one thing, she should try to stick with it. You don't want to be the person in your community whose practice is at odds with everyone around you without good reason. The majority position that she was taught is valid.
The Majority Position — 1:00
The majority position — Hanafi, Shafi'i, and Hanbali, along with most of the companions and their students (tabi'un) — is that reciting the Quran is not allowed during menses or for a man in the state of janaba (major ritual impurity). Al-Tirmidhi, in his book al-Jami', documents this as the position of most of the Sahaba.
What is their evidence? The most reliable hadith they use is in Sahih Bukhari: A'isha reports that the Prophet ﷺ would lean back into her chamber while she was in a state of menstruation, and he would recite the Quran. The famous Shafi'i scholar al-Nawawi says: the point of this narration would only make sense if it was already well-known that women in menses do not recite the Quran — the narration is clarifying that the Prophet ﷺ may still recite in her presence, even though she cannot recite herself.
There is also another hadith that is explicit on this prohibition — in the Sunan of Abu Dawud — but the scholars of hadith are virtually unanimous that this narration is weak due to a specific problematic narrator. Therefore: one hadith is authentic but not quite explicit, and one is explicit but not authentic. The majority builds their ruling on the first one through derivation.
The Minority Position — 3:00
The Maliki school, Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn al-Qayyim, Yasir Qadhi's own teacher Shaykh Ibn Uthaymeen, and the Saudi Council of Senior Scholars all permit a menstruating woman to recite the Quran.
Their argument, articulated most powerfully by Ibn Taymiyyah: during the entire era of revelation, all women were menstruating. If reciting the Quran during menses were prohibited, there would have been explicit, widely-narrated, clear hadith about it — because this affects half of society for a significant portion of every month. The absence of any such clear, authentic, explicit hadith is itself evidence that the prohibition was not established.
The authentic hadith from Bukhari is too indirect to build a prohibition on. The explicit hadith is not authentic. Therefore, by the principle that we do not prohibit what Allah has not clearly prohibited, recitation is allowed.
Ibn al-Qayyim adds: it is inappropriate to ask a woman to abandon the Quran for long stretches of time. If she is memorizing, stopping for a week or ten days every month will break her routine, affect her retention, and diminish her spiritual connection. On what basis are we going to deprive her of an act of worship not explicitly forbidden in any authentic text or in the Quran itself?
Yasir Qadhi's Personal Recommendation — 5:00
Yasir Qadhi is personally sympathetic to both positions. He recommends following the majority if you can — their argument from the Bukhari hadith carries real weight and the position is supported by three of the four schools.
However, if you feel that stopping for more than a week every month will genuinely harm your memorization, break your spiritual routine, or harm your iman — then you may follow the minority position, because:
This is not an obscure fringe opinion — it is a minority but substantive and well-grounded position. If you choose to follow it, do so quietly and privately. Do not make it a point of contention in your community. Let it be a matter between you and Allah.
The Mushaf — Separate Ruling — 6:30
Touching the physical mushaf (written copy of the Quran) is a completely separate and higher-level ruling. On this question, all four schools are agreed, and the position of the Sahaba is unanimous: a person in a state of minor impurity (without wudu) cannot touch the mushaf, let alone someone in a state of major impurity (janaba or menses).
The evidence for this is explicit: the hadith "la yamass al-Quran illa tahir" — "None should touch the Quran except one who is pure." The companions are unanimous on this — there is no dissenting voice among them on this point.
If you are memorizing during your menses and need to look at the text, your options are:
- Use a computer screen — you are not touching the mushaf
- Use a phone or tablet with a stylus — touching the screen through an instrument
- If you must use a physical copy, wear gloves — the prohibition is on bare-hand contact with the mushaf itself
- Use a mushaf with a protective cover — you may handle the cover without restriction