Recently, a scholar told me that punishments in grave like punishment for splashing urine in not mentioned in Quran. Can you please clear my doubts? Another question is: I have been told that standing and passing urine is Makruh. Can you tell me the difference between Makruh and haraam?
Question number: 206
Date posted: 2002-06-13
Answer:
While one does not find any explicit mention of punishments of grave in the Qur’an, such punishments are definitely mentioned in the authentic Sunnah of the Prophet, peace be upon him, which we must accept as valid; rejecting these will be akin to rejecting the Quir’an itself. The Prophet, peace be upon him, has been entrusted not only with the duty of conveying the Qur’an to us, but also with the task of explaining its teaching to us. Therefore, we must accept such narrations of the Prophet, peace upon him, as being part and parcel of Islamic teachings that we must adhere to without questioning.
Having said this, I must add that matters of punishment in the grave or what happens after death including heaven and hell are all beyond ken of human cognition, and, therefore, we must not speculate about them based on our limited human reason; to use reason to judge or evaluate such matters is no different than using a scale meant for measuring gold to weigh a mountain.
The Prophet, peace be upon him, has warned us against being careless and neglectful of cleanliness after defecation and passing urine; our negligence in this area will entail serious consequences.
Now coming to the issue of urinating while standing, it has been considered by some scholars as Makruh or undesirable simply because of the fact that doing so may cause urine to splash on our body or clothes. We should therefore avoid it unless we are faced with a situation where we have no other choice: for instance, while using a public washroom, if there is a concern of exposing ourselves to communicable diseases if we were to do so while sitting on the toilet.
Makruh is something considered as undesirable; technically speaking, it refers to actions that we should avoid, and if we avoid it we will be will be rewarded for it, while, at the same, there is no punishment if we happened to do it. Haraam, on the other hand, is that which is prohibited which we must avoid, for if we did it, we would incur sin and punishment.
If we happen to pass urine while standing because of certain unavoidable circumstances, we must make sure that urine does not splash on our body or clothes. If it does, we must wash ourselves clean before we are eligible to perform Salah.
