Leaving No Part Dry

A woman wearing nail varnish — because her husband likes to see it, perhaps, in pink, or blue, or green, whatever colour is chosen — must remove it entirely before making ghusl, since it sits upon a non-porous surface that water simply cannot pass through, and unless it is removed the water beneath it is never actually reached. The same applies to anyone whose hands are routinely covered in some substance through their work: a painter dealing constantly with paint, a baker whose hands are always in dough, a gardener whose hands carry soil and earth through the working day — whatever substance is coating the hands has to be removed before ghusl, so that water can genuinely reach the skin beneath it, rather than the substance sitting on top of it.

A woman whose hair reaches, say, three metres in length — and remembering that every part of the body, including the hair, has to be washed — need not undo every single plait in order to wash it properly. According to the Ḥanafīs, so long as water thoroughly reaches the scalp itself, the roots of the hair, and is thoroughly washed there, this is accepted as a valid ghusl, even without the hair itself being fully unbound and washed strand by strand. A young man, by contrast — believing, say, in wearing his own hair long, in whatever elaborate or unusual style he happens to favour — must undo it entirely and see that every part of it is properly washed, since leaving even a single hair dry invalidates the whole ghusl; and this is because long hair, unlike for a woman, is not counted as any part of a man's own adornment, his zīnah — that particular concession belongs to women alone, since growing the hair long is no part of what is natural to a man's own beauty. The same real care applies to a thick beard: some report noticing, only after finishing twenty rakʿāt of tarāwīḥ in congregation, that water was still seeping out from a beard washed beforehand, wetting the very place of prostration during the prayer itself — however thick a beard may be, water has to reach the root of every single hair within it, however long that takes, and a shower cap is no substitute for this at all, and is no help whatsoever. There is no excuse in the inconvenience of drying it all afterwards. It has to be done thoroughly, regardless of how long it takes or what it requires.