Treated wastewater, two answers

This lesson asks you to explain current practices for dealing with substances that are not environmentally friendly. The museum offers two religious answers about reusing treated sewage and household wastewater; how treatment works, and how it is tested, is for your class to explain. These answers are rulings on ritual purity (tahara), not safety tests, and the museum gives no safety guidance. The records name treatment only in passing; the processes themselves come from your class. ¹

Compare the two answers: what each says treatment achieves, what it still leaves, and what use each allows. Then ask what a laboratory would measure.

Read the question each body was asked, because the two questions differ. In the first, the questioner said the hospital gardens are watered with recycled sewage and that staff are exposed to its spray ². He asked whether this water is impure and breaks ablution, and whether the fruit of trees watered with it may be eaten ². In the second, the questioner asked about using reclaimed water in mosques to wash courtyards, for cleaning and for ablution, noting that it is reclaimed at treatment plants by chemical treatment and physical separation of impurities, and that it originates as household wastewater ³. Only the second question names a treatment method; the first does not. Each record reports what was said in the answer, and neither issues a ruling of its own.

Ibn Baz answered that once the water has been treated until the colour, taste and smell of impurity are gone and it has become fresh and sound, it takes the ruling of purity ². If traces of impurity remain, it is not to be used for irrigation or anything else, and should be diverted where it harms no one ². Jordan's General Iftaa Department answered that sewage water is impure, however large its quantity, because its qualities have changed; impure water becomes pure by adding a large quantity of water until the whole returns to its original state, as it quoted from al-Nawawi's Minhaj al-Talibin ³. It said purification by chemical treatment and physical separation is not enough to deem the water pure, since it has not truly shed the impurity ³. It concluded that the water may not be used for ablution or for cleaning the body or clothes, and that cleaning mosques with it should be avoided out of respect for them ³.

Each record reports a published answer, not a measurement. The answer of Ibn Baz is published on binbaz.org.sa, the official site of Ibn Baz's legacy, as fatwa 3123 in the Fatawa al-Durus collection ². Jordan's General Iftaa Department published its fatwa on aliftaa.jo as no. 3886, dated 6 June 2024 ³. The Department notes that Jordanian standard no. 893/2021 for reclaimed household wastewater does not allow its use for every purpose ³. The museum records each text as a historical document attributed to its author or issuing body, and it issues no ruling of its own ^{2 3}.

Both answers speak of the colour, taste and smell of impurity. Are a person's senses enough to know that what was in treated water is gone, or would a measurement be needed to show what remains? Take a position, and answer the strongest objection to it, the Department's statement that chemical treatment and physical separation are not enough to deem the water pure since it has not truly shed the impurity ³: why does your position still stand?

• Recycled sewage water: a hospital worker's question about spray and the fruit of trees, and the answer of Ibn Baz.
• Using reclaimed wastewater in mosques: the question and the answer of Jordan's General Iftaa Department.
• Ibn Baz: a Saudi scholar born in Riyadh in 1330 AH.
• Al-Nawawi: the Shafi'i jurist and hadith scholar whose Minhaj al-Talibin the Department quoted.

Read the records on Recycled sewage water and Using reclaimed wastewater in mosques. Make a two-column table of what each answer says about treatment, using only the records.