Running Water, Not a Bath

A question naturally arises over how this is actually to be done. Someone without a lake nearby might object that a full tub, stepped into and relaxed in, ought to serve just as well — but the water used for ghusl must run; it must not simply stand and accumulate around the body. A person in a state of janābah who fills a bathtub with clean water, of the kind found in most Australian homes, and settles into it to relax before climbing out again, has not thereby made ghusl at all, however pleasant the bath itself may have been: every trace of filth gathered between the private parts, the thighs, beneath the arms, and everywhere else on the body, has simply mixed back into that same standing water and smudged itself over the whole body once more. Treating a bath of this kind as cleanliness is not, and never has been, part of this tradition, part of this culture.

None of this means that relaxing in a bathtub, a sauna, a spa — one of the large kind — is itself any difficulty: with all the bubbles, the honey, whatever else is added, Epsom salts for someone elderly, none of it is a problem in itself. But on coming out, a proper shower must still be taken, under running water, to cleanse the body afterwards. Even a swimming pool, full of its own chemicals, observes something of the same principle: before ordinary clothes are put back on, and indeed before the pool is entered in the first place, a shower is required of everyone. There is a reason for this. So too with ghusl: it is made on entering the bathroom itself, standing in the shower, under running water.