Q. I sometimes use a hair gell to maintain my hairstyle when I am at home. Could you please tell me whether it affects the validity of ablution?
A. Abbasi
A. When we do the ablution we need to wet part of our heads by passing one wet hand over a small portion of the head. According to Al-Shafie school of fiqh, it is sufficient to wet an area of 3 hairs, while the Hanafi school recommends about one quarter of one’s head. If the hair gel you use forms a layer over the hair that prevents water from wetting your head, then the validity of your ablution will be questionable. However, today’s products hardly do any such thing. They simply act as a fixing agent and disappear. When you use water, they normally dissolve. As such, they do not affect the validity of ablution.
