Answer
Wa `alaykum as-Salamu wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh.
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
- Muslim jurists maintain that wet dream does not vitiate itikaf, just as it does not invalidate fasting, for the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) says, “The following three do not invalidate fasting: cupping, vomiting and wet dream.” (At-Tirmidhi)
- Besides, such thing as wet dream is something beyond man’s control. Thus, on having wet dream while in itikaf one just has to perform major impurity bath and continue the act of worship.
- As for performing this bath, it’s controversial whether it should be performed in the mosque or outside it; the preferable view is that if performing this bath will not affect the purity of the mosque, that is okay, and such thing is very easy nowadays.
Shedding more light on this issue, we cite the following from The Kuwaiti Encyclopedia of Islamic Jurisprudence:
The scholars unanimously agreed that itikaf is never vitiated by having wet dream, or by going out of the mosque to perform the major impurity bath, except in one case, that is, as mentioned by the Hanafites, if it’s possible for a person to perform the bath inside the mosque, without the fear that this might deplete the purity of the mosque.
Other scholars have different views on this. Some of them maintain that it’s permissible for one to perform the major impurity bath outside the mosque even if it’s guaranteed that performing that bath inside the mosque won’t pollute it.
Some scholars even maintain that it’s obligatory in itikaf to get out of the mosque and perform the major impurity bath; i.e. one should by no means do that in the mosque. If such a person finds it difficult to go out of the mosque, he can perform dry ablution.
With regard to counting the time spent in performing the bath as part of the time of itikaf, this is controversial among scholars. The Shafites, Malikites and Hanafites maintain that time spent in doing that will not be counted as part of itikaf, but the Hanabaites say that time spent on purifying oneself and having major impurity bath will be counted as part of itikaf.
Allah Almighty knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.