A Single Dry Hair, and the Disease of Doubt

According to the Ḥanafīs, if even a single hair on the body is left dry, the ghusl made is not valid — even one hair. A natural objection follows: how is anyone to know whether one particular hair, out of all the hair on the body, remains dry, without going round searching for it? The question touches on a genuine difficulty, and one that causes real problems for some. Certain people, precisely because they suffer from waswasa, spend forty-five minutes, or an hour and a half, in the shower, unsure whether a particular root has truly been reached and touched by the water.

This is a spiritual affliction, one the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) described as striking people who are genuinely sincere, who want to do exactly the right thing — and who, for that very reason, go on washing, washing, washing and washing without end. The same happens with wuḍūʾ. It is especially common among young men passing through a period of spiritual change, at the point where their hearts are turning and they want to get everything right; they fall into this and are caught in it as in a whirlwind, unable to get out easily, sometimes for years before they do. The whole body must be drenched in water, and no doubt should be entertained in the heart over it; the heart itself must be convinced that the washing is complete.

There is the account of a long bus journey between two cities, Melbourne and Sydney, on which the young man assisting the driver suddenly announced that he needed to take a shower — he had had a dream requiring ghusl, and now needed to pray. There being no shower to hand, the bus was stopped beside a fast-running river. Told simply to go and make ghusl, the young man went down to the water, made his intention, and jumped in; he came out, dressed — not, of course, remaining in his wet clothes — and came back to ask whether his ghusl was now acceptable. He was told no, and sent back to do it again. He went, did it again, dressed, and returned, and asked once more whether it was acceptable; he was told no a second time, and sent back a second time. He jumped in a third time, came out, dressed, and this time came back and simply said that his ghusl was now acceptable, without putting it as a question at all. He was told that indeed it now was.

The point of the account is this: on the first two occasions he had been asking out of waswasa, out of doubt as to whether it was acceptable or not — and a person cannot remain suspended between the two. The heart itself must become settled and convinced. Some fall into this doubt to the point of what was termed an impulsive compulsive disorder^**: one arm washed thoroughly, right through, and then, moving to wash the other, a doubt arising as to whether a small spot was left on the first one after all, so that the whole ghusl is started over — once, twice, three times, four times, forty-five minutes gone by, the water bill running up, and no accounting for it but isrāf, extravagance, Allah knows best. This is itself a disease. For anyone suffering from such a condition, there is a way out, and guidance may be sought to be freed of it.

But for a person not affected by any of this — an ordinary person, who simply recalls, once finished — whether standing under the shower or pouring water the old traditional way — that some particular part, the right foot, say, was not washed, the answer is far simpler: only that part needs to be washed, not the whole body again, and the ghusl as a whole is certainly not repeated. Something similar can happen with wuḍūʾ: hurrying through it, a person may realise partway that the left arm was left dry, and it is enough to go and wash that arm alone; the whole wuḍūʾ is not begun again. But where the unwashed part is known and is left unwashed regardless — where a person is aware some part remains dry and walks out anyway, already dressed — that wuḍūʾ, or that ghusl, is not valid, and the state of janābah remains; it must be gone back to and properly completed, not merely topped up after the fact. The underlying rule throughout ghusl is that the whole body must be thoroughly drenched: it is not enough merely to rub a moistened hand over the unwashed part. Water itself has to flow over it.