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:
If a husband has oral sex with his wife and ejaculates, then ghusl is obligatory. However, if he only releases madhy, then wudu is only required, and the wife has to wash the madhy away.
Responding to your question, Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and an Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, states:
There is a difference of opinion among the founders of the Four Schools of Jurisprudence regarding whether mani (semen) is najas (impure) or not.
While both Imams Abu Hanifah and Malik consider it najas, both Imams Ash-Shafi`i and Ahmad do not consider it as such.
Notwithstanding these differences, all of them insist on washing it away if it is wet, and if dry, scrubbing or erasing it from body, cloth or any other surface it may have come into contact with.
When we inquire into the cause behind the above differences of opinion, we can readily see that it stems from the different ways the Imams interpreted the various traditions of the Prophet (peace be upon him), as well as from the analogies they based their views on.
The traditions from the Prophet do not insist that we must wash semen away in all cases, but clearly state that we should do so if it is wet.
The traditions also suggest that it is sufficient to scrub it away if it has dried up. Thus, the Imams asked the question: Are we to compare semen to bodily secretions such as breast milk and spittle, which are considered pure, or are we to consider it analogous to feces and urine, both of which are undoubtedly considered najas (impure)?
As far as the “oral sex” question is concerned, we had deliberately avoided the phrase “oral sex” to avoid confusion with “oral stimulation”. Further, we must clearly indicate that any deliberate act of sexual intercourse must be done in the place created for it (i.e., the vagina), while oral stimulation itself is permissible.
If, however, during the course of oral stimulation, ejaculation takes place, one must wash it away if it gets in one’s clothing or mouth. We must further add that no Muslim should ever consider consuming it in any way.
As far as madhy (pre-seminal fluid) in males as well as its lubricating equivalent in females is concerned, it is considered najas (impure) in all of the accepted Schools of Fiqh (Jurisprudence) and, therefore, one must definitely wash it away.
Almighty Allah knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.