Making Ghusl Properly

It is preferable to sit while making ghusl, where the means allow it — this was the adab of earlier times, sitting rather than standing, and it wastes less water besides. Three things are done first, before ghusl itself properly begins. First, the hands are washed thoroughly, up to the wrists. Second, all of the private parts are washed thoroughly, with soap, whether or not anything has actually happened to make this particular washing necessary — the bacteria that gather there regardless of any discharge still have to be removed. Since the ordinary washing with shower gel, shampoo and every other such thing is going to be done in any case, the most sensible order is to do all of that first, as its own step, and only then move to ghusl proper, once the sense of being already clean has been reached.

Once this preliminary washing is finished, the intention is made in the heart — for Allah's (swt) own sake, to perform ghusl, to fulfil this farḍ, and to come out of the state of janābah into purity — preferably not facing the qiblah while the intention is made, though where there is no option about the direction, that is a different matter and no difficulty follows from it. An ordinary wuḍūʾ is made next, the very same wuḍūʾ familiar from before ṣalāh, mouth and nostrils included exactly as already described; this wuḍūʾ is itself part of the ghusl, not a separate act alongside it or before it. Only then does the rest of ghusl proceed: water is poured three times over the head, rubbing every part of the body as it is poured so that nothing at all is left dry; three times more over the right shoulder, the same rubbing repeated across the body each time; and three times over the left shoulder, the same again, until not a single dry spot remains anywhere on the body at all. At that point ghusl is complete. Where water pools beneath the feet — because of a blocked shower drain, or because washing is being done in the older style, from a large basin or bucket — the feet are washed last of all, so that no impurity remains sitting on them at the very moment of stepping out.

A question sometimes arises here: having already made wuḍūʾ earlier in the day, for an earlier ṣalāh, is a separate ghusl still required afterwards, mouth and nostrils and all? It is: the wuḍūʾ made within the shower is simply part of the ghusl itself, and an earlier wuḍūʾ, made for some other purpose, does not stand in its place or excuse any part of it. Nor should the whole process take anything like forty-five minutes. Two and a half to three minutes is genuinely enough, and a shower running to four minutes or beyond is water being wasted — a musrif, one who wastes, is what such a person becomes.