What is the philosophy behind “Ghusl”?

One of the obligations of Islam is Ghusl or major ablution. There are some obligatory Ghusl and some recommended ones; the obligatory Ghusl is like the Ghusl of Jinabah, the Ghusl of touching the corpse, etc.

And the recommended Ghusls are such as the Ghusl of the day of Friday, the Gusl of repentance, etc.

Now let’s talk about the philosophy behind Ghusl:

First we talk about the Ghusl of Jinabah:

It is obligatory after intercourse or ejaculation. There is a Narration from Imam Reza peace be upon him that we mention some parts of that.

The Imam said as the answer to a question regarding the philosophy of the Ghusl of Jinabah:

The reason of that is for the purification of the soul and cleanliness from its impurity and cleaning the body from the filth. Because Jinabah comes out from the whole body for this very reason it is obligatory to purify the whole body, and the reason of reduction in urine and stool is that these two cases happen so much more than Jinabah, so Islam for the multiplicity of these two cases and hardship (of Ghusl in every time) has decreed just Wudu for them.

But about the reason of Ghusls such as the Ghusl of Friday and the Ghusl of the feast of Ghorban or the feast of Fitr,  the first reason is  to glorify Allah and ask Him the repentance from the sins, and the second reason is that these days are known as  feast for the servants (of Allah) and they remember Allah in these days, so it is for the glorification of these days, and the third reason(which is related to the Ghusl of Friday) is that when a servant performs the Ghusl of Friday, he/she is pure spiritually from this day to the next Friday…

 

The meaning of this sentence that Jinabah comes out from the whole body is that when this state happens to a person, the effect of that appears in the whole body and makes all of the cells of the body in a numbness and this is a witness of the effect of that on the whole body, but the urine or stool is not like that and they are local.

It has been proved by the scientific researchers that the body of human has two kinds of nervous system, sympathetic and parasympathetic, the duty of the first system is to activate the activities of different systems of the body and the duty of the parasympathetic which is a system with smooth activity, is that mostly wants to save the energy. Sometimes the balance between these two systems is broken, one of these cases is at the time of orgasm, at that time the parasympathetic system surpasses the sympathetic system and this balance goes on a negative state, and it has been proved that one of the things that make the sympathetic system active, is touching with the water, and because this is affected on the whole body, we are ordered to wash the whole body, and through Ghusl, the complete balance between this two systems will be formed.

But another philosophy can be that this Ghusl is a kind of obedience of Allah and because in the orgasm, both body and soul are affected, so with Ghusl, that must be done only for the sake of Allah as the obedience to His order, both physical and spiritual sides of human get pure.

———————

Source:

Islamquest.net