Running Water, and What Counts as Running

As already explained, filling a bathtub, a spa or a sauna and relaxing there — dabbing the body with soap here and there and calling that clean — is not ghusl at all: the water used for ghusl must run, not stand and gather around the body, or every trace of filth simply mixes back through the same water and smears itself over the skin again, unseen. Where a shower is of the older kind — a shower head set inside the bathtub itself, with no separate drain of its own — so that water pools around the feet, the feet are washed last — one taken out and washed, then the other — so that no trace of impurity remains standing on them.

A question naturally arises over larger bodies of water: a river, or what is called a sea, an ocean. These are treated on an entirely different ruling. Because of their sheer quantity they are regarded as running water, and ghusl made in them is valid. Within the shower itself, however, it is not proper to recite the Qur'an aloud, or any duʿāʾ aloud, according to the Ḥanafīs; remembrance held in the heart is a different matter, but voicing such words there is not permitted.