LEVELS OF WARA (II)

Second level is the wara’ of the sâlih [good] people, and subsumes avoiding the doubtful as well as the harâms. There are three groups of the doubtful: It is wâjib to avoid some of them, (the first group,) and others, (the second group,) are mustahab to avoid. And there are still others, (the third group,) to avoid which is sheer doubt and distrust, which in turn is something useless. An example of this is to avoid eating game hunted on the far-fetched speculation that the game may have been someone’s personal property; [or not to go to the butcher’s to buy meat on the distrust that the meat being sold there may be from animals killed in a manner counter to Islamic principles such as by a disbeliever without a heavenly book or by a murtadd or (by a Muslim but) without saying the Basmala or to evacuate the house that oneborrowed as an ’âriyat [1] only because one surmises that its owner may have been dead and so it may now be owned by the inheritors. Unless there is a justifiable ground for such speculative surmises, they are only useless and groundless doubts and suppositions.