As the coronavirus spreads worldwide, people always remind to limit physical contact, wash hands, and avoid touching their faces. Recent Netflix documents “Infectious Diseases: How to Prevent Outbreaks” explain how Islamic rituals known as “ablutions” can help spread a good hygiene message.
The focus is on Saira Mada, a Muslim public health specialist at a New York hospital, who takes a break from praying at New York University’s Islamic Center. Before entering the prayer room, Madhu stops to perform ablutions and washes his face and face and feet.
Islamic law requires Muslims to cleanse their bodies regularly before prayers. As a scholar of Islamic studies who studies ritual among Muslims, I have found that these methods have spiritual and physical benefits.
Formal purification
Prophet Muhammad left detailed guidance to Muslims on how to live their lives, including prayer, fasting, and formal purification. This guidance is available in collections called Hadith.
According to Islamic teaching and law, there are minor and major impurities. Minor impurities include urination, defecation, and sleep, among other methods. It believes that a Muslim religion person has to perform the ritual of washing his body before prayers to get rid of these minor impurities.
As was done by Hazrat Muhammad (PBUH), Wudhu is to perform in a special order before the prayer, five times a day. Before saying a prayer each time, Muslims expect to wash in a certain order – first the hands, then the mouth, nose, face, hair and ears, and finally their ankles and feet.
It is necessary to wash with water when available, but if a person doesn’t have access to water, then a Muslim can wash his hands and face with dust or sometimes sand or other natural “Clean” the content.
A Qur’anic verse says: “And if you are ill, or on a journey or one of you has come from a place of rest, or you have had to contact with women, and you have not found water, then seek clean land. And wipe your hands and your faces with wiping. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Forgiving.
A hadith of the Prophet (PBUH) also states that if there is a lack of water to wash the earth, it is cleaner earth.
In Islamic texts, major impurity defines after sexual intercourse or when a woman completes her period. A Muslim woman during her menstrual period should not pray. To purify oneself after such impurity, a Muslim must perform ghusl, called “ghusl.” A person needs to wash his whole body from head to toe, including his hair.
Spiritual deeds
Washing one’s body with water and preparing for prayers can be a deeply spiritual process for Muslims. Paul Powers, an expert in Islamic sciences, argued that this was not an “empty ritual,” but an embodied process that supported the individual center of inner religiosity.
Similarly, another Islamic scholar, Marion Katz, in her 2002 book, Body of Text, explained the importance of ablution in its symbolic cleansing. It does not always clean the body parts that are “physically covered by the Pollution Act.”
Formal purity differs from hygiene practices, although Islam also emphasizes good hygiene. Muslims often take care of washing, including using water after going to the bathroom.
According to public health guidelines
In the threat posed by the coronavirus, Muslim leaders around the world, including in the United States, have linked their religious views to public health experts.
Muslim institutions have begun recommending that people wash their hands with soap for 20 seconds before performing ablutions. Emphasizing that ablution alone cannot stop the virus from spreading, other Islamic organizations suggest that mosques provide extra soap and hand-cleaning equipment near the washing area.
He has issued orders to cancel Friday prayers, urging Muslims to wash their hands regularly with soap, refrain from touching their faces, and avoid social stigma.
Although people have cleaned local store shelves for hand hygiene items, wipes, cleaners, gloves, and masks, basic hygiene practices are the perfect way to prevent coronavirus and other viruses.
At the moment, Islamic practices emphasizing physical cleanliness can reaffirm the importance of healthy practices, including the use of soap or hand-cleansing health, to reduce one’s risk of contracting the virus.
