Answered by Ustadha Shazia Ahmad
Question
When I have my period, I have a brown discharge, then sometimes yellow or sometimes creamy. For white discharge, does creamy color count when on the tissue? It looks white, but on cotton wool, the discharge has a very very light tint that you have to really look at carefully to see. Do I take a bath or wait for a clear discharge which may come a week later?
Answer
Thank you for your question. May Allah reward you for attempting to do your best to discern the right color for purification and for your worship.
Colour
Creamy or dusky-colored discharge does not count as purity and is still considered menstruation. [e13.2, The Reliance of the Traveller]
Steps
- Check on one type of material only, so you don’t go back and forth between tissue and cotton wool
- Take only ten seconds to discern the colour and don’t study it for a long time as that can give way to doubt.
- Check the colour in natural light if possible
- Make sure you are not looking at a clump, as a clump is always darker. Spread it out.
- Make sure you are checking it while wet because it will get darker when dry.
- Finally, use a kursuf (a piece of white material -not tissue- placed gently between the labial lips. Then if you walk around for 5-10 minutes and check, it will give you the most recent, fresh colour to discern.)
- Place the kursuf 30 minutes or so before the end of the prayer time so you can see whether your period ended with enough time for you to shower and pray an obligatory prayer.
Conclusion
After having taken all these steps, if you still find that waiting longer will give your discharge the time it needs to go from dusky-coloured to white, then you must wait.
May Allah give you the best of this world and the next.
[Ustadha] Shazia Ahmad
Checked and Approved by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani
Ustadha Shazia Ahmad lived in Damascus, Syria for two years where she studied aqida, fiqh, tajweed, tafsir, and Arabic. She then attended the University of Texas at Austin, where she completed her Masters in Arabic. Afterward, she moved to Amman, Jordan where she studied fiqh, Arabic, and other sciences. She later moved back to Mississauga, Canada, where she lives with her family.