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Does Blowing Nose Invalidate Prayer?

11 October, 2023
Q As-salamu `alaykum everyone. I have a seasonal allergy that affects my ears, eyes, throat and nose. It makes me sneeze often and many times in a row and also blow nose often (in few harder cases I can't even release the hanky of my nose; it's almost like from tap). Hence, I have two questions: 1) If I begin to sneeze during the prayer, how do I continue? Simply continue after sneezing stops, or should I say alhamdulillah after sneezing as I do when not praying, or I should do something else? 2) What should I do if I have to blow nose during prayer? During summer I almost always have to blow it at least few times during one prayer (because after wudu and also changing heights of my head during prayer it gets really worse and I have to blow nose even more often as normal). How should I act so my prayer would be valid insha Allah? Thank you!

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:

As for your question, you should not say any words that are not part of the prayer. But if you have to blow your nose so often during prayer, you are under the exempted category of the normal rulings of prayer. So, you can clean your nose and normally complete your prayer.

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In his response to your question, Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and an Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, states:

I pray to Allah to grant you relief.

1- During the prayer, you should not utter the words of praise or supplications that are not part of the prayer. You may do so outside prayer. If you are suffering from this condition on a perpetual basis, then you may do well to pray at home rather than in congregation.

2- If you need to blow your nose so often during prayer and you have no control over it, you are excused; neither your wudu nor prayer is broken because of it; since in this case you come under the category of those who are excused due to medical challenges. In other words, the standard laws do not apply to those with such challenges.

Allah Almighty knows best.

Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.