Question: What is used water?
Answer:
In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful and Compassionate,
Used Water and Misgivings
Assalāmu ‘alaykum Dear Sister or Brother in Faith,
First, please send many peace and blessings on our Master Muhammad. This will bring peace to your heart.
Misgivings are from Satan — you must ignore them entirely. Allah says, in explaining the tactics of Satan,
I will come at them- from their front and their back, from their right and they’re left- and You will find that most of them are ungrateful. (Quran 7:17)
Regarding this verse, Imam Tabari states,
“It has been said that Allah did not mention ‘from above them’ because Allah’s Mercy descends upon His servants from on high.”
The Messenger of Allah is pure Mercy. When you are afflicted with such thoughts, fight Satan from the one direction that he cannot reach you — from above — by attracting Divine Mercy.
May Allah’s Infinite Peace and Blessings be upon our Master, our Guide, our Intercessor, our Beloved, Muhammad.
Second, please note that the way Allah instructs us to worship Him is of a deeply sublime, supra-rational nature. Rationalizing it will not make it correct. Rather, simple submission is what will make it valid, accepted, and blessed.
The rule is very simple and should not cause you any confusion.
Used water becomes so in two instances: [Shurunbulali, Maraqi al-Falah]
(1) when used to lift ritual impurities, such as in wudu’ or ghusl
(2) when used for a devotional act, such as washing one’s hands before or after eating, in keeping with the Prophet’s words,
“The blessing in food is in washing one’s hands before and after it.” [From the narration of Salman, collected by Tabarani]
And Allah knows best.
Additionally, water does not become used upon the first contact with one’s skin, but rather upon flowing off the skin.
Furthermore, the first step of wudu is to wash one’s hands, thus rendering them a pure instrument to be used in the rest of our purification. There is no problem at all with using your hands to deliver water to another limb for the purpose of purification. It is not necessary to put your limb directed under a faucet or the like to deliver water to it. [Marghinani, Hidayah 1:328]
Be at rest. Your wudu is valid. May Allah accept from us all. Amin.
[Ustadha] Iman Badawi
Checked and Approved by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani