Recordings › Hadith Analysis: Did the Prophet ﷺ Refer to Women as Lacking Intellect and Faith? · 29 Jul 2018 › Segment 5 of 6
Is not praying during menstruation a sign of weak faith?
sawm roza siyam rozah saum hadeeth ahadith ahaadeeth hadis hadees ahaadith musafir musaafir safar imam bukhari sahih al-bukhari sahih bukhari saheeh al-bukhari saheeh bukhari imam al-bukhari shari'ah shariat sharee'ah qiyas qiyaas muftis sunna sunnat sunan prophetic practice iman imaan eemaan eeman koran quraan al-quran shukr shukar shukur deen al-din ad-deen ad-din ajr sawab thawab thawaab sawaab'Lacking intellect and faith': testimony, menstruation and absurd logic
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This segment23:44 to 30:42 · 6 min 58 sGeneral teaching
What this part covers
machinesummary, machine-writtenNo: Mufti Abu Layth says women refrain from prayer during menstruation because the religion told them to, so calling it a lack of faith is absurd and the report is a misattribution.
In more detail
Mufti Abu Layth notes that in one narration it is a companion, not the Prophet, who says women lack intellect, and asks how women can lack intellect yet distract a resolute man. He says the answers given, a woman's testimony and her not praying or fasting while menstruating, are rules that came to women from the religion itself, so shaming them for it is absurd, like telling someone to stay behind and then calling them dumb for staying. Mufti cites the narration in al-Bukhari that menstruation is something Allah has decreed for the daughters of Adam, and says the religion would not period-shame women for a dispensation it gave them. He argues that in the Sharia anyone lacking an ability, the ill, the traveller or the elderly, receives a dispensation and reward, not punishment, and that Allah does not burden a soul beyond its capacity. Mufti concludes that the report clashes with the Quran, the Sunnah and the principles of Islam, has turbulence and factual errors, and is an impossible misattribution and an insult to Allah, His Messenger and Islam.
Position stated
Mufti Abu Layth says it is absurd to say women lack faith for not praying while menstruating, when the religion itself told them not to pray.
“do you not refrain from praying when you menstruating say yes I said well that's the lack of your faith wealthy irony here is that these rules have come to them from the religion so”
Category: teaching
Kind: general teachingTranscript
machine23:44 to 30:42 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary
whatever is the taboo of a of a generation that's what becomes this way so cursing is really swearing and the prophets Allah listen and when he was talking about cursing he was talking about this like god damn you god damn you got damn it god damn you was a version of swearing and the swears in the past were not sexual because sex was not really a taboo in the past they're actually ironically became more of a to me with the Victorian age so in the past disease famine all of these things were a taboo so people would wish them on each other as a curse to kind of to kind of harm each other but not as an actual
it's not that they said you know Oh like I'm praying to God me God that kind of stuff happens as well but this was just LAN LAN right so that's the first error and the second error is about being ungrateful and men and women are equal in being ungrateful the next issue the contradiction is the Prophet says Oh allegedly by the way one of the narrations you see in it nahi bond I believe it's in Abner headband where even a masseur old actually he's the one who says not this article that women lack intellect and not the Prophet so this some narration narrow toriel
variations as well now in these hadith allegedly the Prophet is saying women they lack intellect yet they can easily distract a very determined man okay so one question is do they how do they do they distract them just by being clever lose this but be myself well this is their beauty okay so their beauty just distracts a man no matter how resolute emani's but then how how does that tie in with them actually lacking intellect but let's let's go on let's not stop there they asked the prophet in this hadith that what is it
that we lack intellect with and what is it that we lack our faith in so the Prophet allegedly answers them he says that a later Shahada to Anakin isn't the testimony of one of you equal to two sorry half of that of a man and they say yes says well that's your intellect and in another hadith sorry and in the other apart he says do you not refrain from praying when you menstruating say yes I said well that's the lack of your faith wealthy irony here is that these rules have come to them from the religion so
that's that's absurd like the religion on one hand when you look inside Buhari Allah the Prophet says oh the menstruation is something in all it's in the mouth like a shaken cat about Laura Benanti Adam you know tell this is something that allies it's a law of nature that Allah has set for females it's nothing like he tells them in a way that this is nothing to kind of think bad about menstruation so if this is something natural how can the religion be kind of like well kind of period shaming them for it like it's saying on
one hand you see because that's a contradiction like I can't say tit like if I say to you like imagine I've got a group of people and I say okay well we're gonna go out now and I'll tell you what you stay here and I select one of them to stay here and he says okay and then I say oh we'll do you stay here well that just shows that you're dumb the person will say well but you told me to stay here so so on one hand we're saying that Allah and His Messenger are saying oh you're not allowed to don't pray or don't fast this is a dispensation for you it's like you get
this off it's it's taken as a token of charity so they say all right thanks thanks much appreciated and then we said haha well now you lack faith well then just tell them to pray then they would just pray you've you told them to pray like you can't you see that Sikh that's absurd kind of equation you can't do something like that I can't say well don't do this and now that are told you to don't do it you refrain and then I kind of shame you for it hahaha you know like you're so incapable you don't even do that well I don't do that because you
asked me not to do it so once again another mockery which is ridiculing the religion and this is ridiculing a lot the other thing is that look if let me let's take a look at this these hadith or the message of these hadith or that women they lack intellect to and they lack faith to be able to perform these extra prayers let's just for a moment just ride with that hypothetically let's just ride with that for a moment that they lack faith for
because they don't pray whilst they own the administration if somebody lacked faith let's take any other example let's say I'm just this is a poor analogy but I'm just giving you an example let's say you're gonna say somebody going through a difficult time but there could be a traveler or an ill person or somebody underage or somebody elderly within the Sharia whenever they lack something oh let's say they're ill there will be a dispensation for them and there will be an extra reward and you ought to save to somebody that likes the ability that you know what because you don't have the ability you this and
stress safeguarding for you from the punishment because you're actually you lack the capability so this is how it ought to be I'm just saying that if somebody was lacking an ability you ought to kind of say well you know for you there's extenuating circumstances we're not you're not going to get punishment because you are lacking rather than saying because you have an inability we're gonna double one issue which goes against the core I'm layer you can live a long enough son allow us I have that Allah does not do
take leave so this is another irony so you see that this hadith is full these are these are full of contradictions they clash with the Quran they clash with the Sunnah they clash with the principles of Islam they have turbulence in them now they seem to mention factual errors like women swearing and cursing always excessively which is not cross-cultural is actually they underperform against their male counterparts in gratitude which is an you know non gender-specific and and they miss our actual crimes like
murder warfare all these things genocide which are usually always caused by men and it seems to pick up as on these tiny things at these there is it is impossible this is a false miss attribution to the messenger of allah this is actually an insult to allah to his messenger to islam this is an insult to attribute these hadith to the messenger of allah so anybody that's asking look whenever you look at the validity of a hadith it has to measure up against the principles of islam now when we take a look at these chains by
Paragraphs overlapping 23:44 to 30:42. Full text on the recording page.
Cite this segment
Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2018-07-29-S05, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/tfzo7s3t_8o/s/5/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2018, July 29). Is not praying during menstruation a sign of weak faith? [Video, segment 2018-07-29-S05, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/tfzo7s3t_8o/s/5/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2018. "Is not praying during menstruation a sign of weak faith?" Video, segment 2018-07-29-S05, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded July 29, 2018. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/tfzo7s3t_8o/s/5/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2018-07-29-S05, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{Is not praying during menstruation a sign of weak faith?}}, year = {2018}, month = {7}, date = {2018-07-29}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/tfzo7s3t_8o/s/5/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/tfzo7s3t_8o/s/5/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2018-07-29-S05, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
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