Wiping Over the Khuffayn

One practice deserves particular attention here, because young Muslims today take to it with more enthusiasm and more religious zeal than to almost anything else: wiping over ordinary socks when making wuḍūʾ. According to the ʿulamāʾ of the four schools — Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah, mainstream Islam; what the rest do is their own affair, and what some deviant cults practise is no concern here — the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) gave permission, in an authentic hadith, to make masḥ ʿalā al-khuffayn, masḥ ʿalā al-jawrabayn, wiping over the khuff or over the sock. But the word khuffayn, translated today simply as "socks," does not and cannot mean the socks worn now.

The proof lies in the four conditions the ʿulamāʾ set for anything worn on the feet that may be wiped over rather than washed — and it is worth weighing these against whatever socks are on one's own feet while reading. First, durability: the covering must be strong enough to allow walking upon roads in it for at least three sharʿī miles, on a rough surface, without breaking or tearing. Second, if not tied on the leg it must not simply slip down — though elastic sewn into the material, holding it up on its own so that it does not fall the way an ordinary sock does, is counted as being tied. Third, it must be waterproof, so that water cannot seep through it. Fourth, it must not be transparent, or even semi-transparent. Durability, standing on its own, being waterproof, being opaque: an ordinary cotton sock, weighed against these four conditions, plainly fails every one of them.

To translate khuffayn as an ordinary cotton sock is nothing short of murder — the greatest trick of the age, perpetrated by people who say "no madhhab, no madhhab, no madhhab," who translate the hadith of the Prophet literally, take fiqh into their own hands, and issue fatwā according to their own untrained thinking. Man aftā al-nāsa bi-ghayri ʿilm, the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) says: whoever gives fatwā without sound knowledge, without Islamic knowledge, may have upon him the curse of every angel in the heavens. Man qāla fī al-Qurʾāni bi-ghayri ʿilm: whoever speaks of the Qurʾān, who interprets its āyāt, without knowledge, should prepare his place in Jahannam. Show such a person a single hadith and belief might follow — but a million hadith placed before him change nothing, because his head has become rock; he will not understand, since he has taken the law into his own hands, has no Arabic and no ʿilm of any kind, and yet issues fatwā to anyone, right, left and centre.

Some of the ʿulamāʾ hold — and this has been heard directly, with one's own ears, from scholars who teach it — that anyone who at some point in the past made tawbah, came and joined a particular path, began to pray, and has — māshāʾAllāh — been praying for the last ten years, must go back and check his wuḍūʾ; and if that wuḍūʾ was built on nothing more than wiping over ordinary socks, he needs to make qaḍāʾ of those ten years of ṣalāh. This is not said as a joke. It is the position of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah, plainly. Whoever wishes to read the matter out in full may consult Professor Dr Wahbah al-Zuḥaylī's book on fiqh, an encyclopaedic work running to seven or eight volumes, where the evidence of all four schools is discussed and the point explained so clearly that there is no way around it. It is time to stop following the madhhab of the nafs, and to stop following the madhhab of the shayṭān.

None of this is any reason to discount a farḍ component of wuḍūʾ that Allah (swt) names directly in the Qurʾān — wash your feet — merely because a concession happens to exist for the khuff. Despite that concession, where the khuff does not meet the four conditions and is not properly used, the wuḍūʾ built upon it is incomplete, and therefore the ṣalāh resting on it is likewise incomplete and is not accepted, since ṣalāh requires as its prerequisite ṭahārah mina al-ḥadath, and that has not been achieved. The matter will not be dwelt on further; it has been said, and the duty of saying it is done. Khuffs meeting all four conditions, by contrast — soft, gentle, made of leather, widely available — are a genuine niʿmah from Allah (swt), a form of ease, and may be bought and worn without difficulty by men and women alike, wiped over freely and permissibly. What is not permitted is taking such a ruling into one's own hands and interpreting it from hearsay, from what is heard from other people, rather than from written proof drawn from the scholars and jurists of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah — that is not a madhhab at all, only the madhhab of one's own nafs. Ḥafiẓanā Allāhu wa iyyākum — may Allah protect us all.