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Fatwa CenterThe extent of disease that permits one to use forbidden medicines
Question
Assalaamo alaykom
In case there be no other medications beside a medication that is haraam, what is the general rule for the illness so that we may use the medication? I mean how severe should the illness be? Further, What I exactly suffer is kind of religous OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). I cannot do the Assajdah, since always thoughts ( or images or names or ... ) of people come to my mind and I am frightened that I might do the asssajdah to them, and even if I try to do thae assajdah, I will be so stressed that I actually do not understand what I say. I should add that once that I quit my job ( I am a PhD student) and started to exercise reqularly (4 hours a day) and after a month or so my situation was over, so that the medication has an alternative.
Answer
All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad 
is His slave and Messenger.
It appears – Allaah Knows best – that the disease that permits one to use forbidden medicines when there is no lawful medicine is the disease one predominantly thinks that it will cause his death or that leads to an unbearable hardship. We found that the jurists of the Shaafi’ee School of jurisprudence discussed the question “If a child smelled wine and (being addicted to it) it is feared that he will be harmed if it is not given to him to drink, would it be permissible to give him a quantity that would repel the harm from him? They answered: “If it is feared that he will die or that a disease would lead to his death, then, in this case, it is permissible (to give it to him to drink). Some of them [the Shaafi’ee scholars] commented on this saying: “It is enough for such a disease to lead to hardship.”
However, since you found a lawful medicine that drives this OCD from you, then praise be to Allaah. On the other hand, if a person is affected by such a disease, he should endeavor to avoid the whispers of the devil. For example, if a person is in a situation like yours, and he wants to pray, and when he wants to prostrate the devil whispers to him that he is prostrating to other than Allaah, then he should not pay attention to that; rather, he should say to himself, “I am prostrating to Allaah only”, and so forth. Moreover, you should know that you are not allowed to abandon the prayer and the prostration due to these assumed imaginary whispers. For more benefit on curing OCD, please refer to Fatwa 90425.
Allaah Knows best.
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