A person has undergone surgery for a hiatal hernia and is experiencing continuous bloating and gas, making it difficult to pray and perform ablution without discomfort.
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1 Answer
Peace be upon you.
Ayatollah Khamenei (may Allah protect him):
For someone with a continuous issue like yours, there are three scenarios:
1. If there is a period during which you do not pass gas or stool that is sufficient for purification and prayer, even if you can only perform the minimum requirements of prayer, you must wait for this period and pray during it.
2. If there is no such period, and passing gas during prayer does not cause you hardship in performing ablution and continuing your prayer (for example, if it happens once, twice, or three times), you should perform ablution and pray, keeping water close by. If something happens, you should perform ablution without delay and continue your prayer from where you left off.
3. If there is no period at all, but the passing of gas is continuous to the extent that if you perform ablution after each occurrence and continue praying, it would cause you hardship, you may perform one ablution for each prayer. However, you cannot pray two prayers with one ablution.
Source: Special Inquiry + Office of His Eminence Sayyid Khamenei in Lebanon.
Ayatollah Sistani (may Allah protect him):
For someone who has a continuous issue, like yours, there are three scenarios:
⊙ First: If you find a period of time where you can pray in a state of purity (even if only fulfilling the obligatory parts), you must do so and delay your prayer if the period is at the beginning or during the prayer time. If you do not pray until the period has passed, your prayer is valid if you acted according to your actual duty, even if you sinned by delaying.
⊙ Second: If you do not find any period at all, or if the period is too short to allow for purification and part of the prayer, you should perform ablution (or take a bath or perform tayammum as required by your actual duty) and then pray, not worrying about what comes out of you after that before or during the prayer. You remain in a state of purity unless you experience a different event or the same event is not related to your illness, even before recovery. Your other obligatory and recommended prayers are also valid, and it is preferable to purify yourself for each prayer and to hasten to it after purification.
⊙ Third: If you have a period that allows for purification and part of the prayer, it is obligatory to achieve purification and pray during that period. However, it is not necessary to renew your purification if an event occurs during or after the prayer unless another event occurs as described in the second scenario. It is recommended, especially for someone with a continuous issue, to renew purification whenever an event occurs during the prayer and to continue from where you left off unless the repetition becomes excessive to the point of causing hardship or losing the required continuity between parts of the prayer due to the unexpected event or renewing purification taking a long time. It is also recommended that if you experience an event after the prayer, you renew your purification for another prayer.
Source: Minhaj al-Salihin, Book of Purification, Chapter Six: The Ruling of Continuous Events.
May you be successful in all good.