This has apparently been a thing for a
while, but recently I saw an article about "halal" nail polish. Muslims are supposed to wash before prayer (face, hands,
feet). According to some Islamic scholars, water has
to touch all the skin, otherwise the washing is somehow invalid. The
general consensus seems to be that nail polish, being
water-impermeable, prevents complete washing, therefore Muslim women
cannot wear nail polish and pray. To meet this problem, some
companies have invented polishes that are oxygen- and
water-permeable.
At best, I can only
believe the scholars who came up with this interpretation are
stupidly nit-picky. Like Monsura Sirajee, I think this injunction
has more to do with avoiding “corrupting” Western influences,
and/or just the bog-standard misogyny often found in the Abrahamic
traditions.
It
seems to me that this interpretation completely misses the point of
the washing, which is not unique to Islam; people wash their hands
before entering Shinto shrines in Japan, and while it's not exactly
hand-washing, dipping one's finger into the font of holy water at the
entrance of a Catholic church to make the sign of the cross is a
ritual procedure along the continuum of washing rites. Washing off
actual dirt isn't the
point.
This
point about dirt is emphasized in the Quran itself, in the very sura
that outlines ritual ablutions performed prior to prayer. Sura
5:6 states, “But if you are ill, or on a journey, or one of you has
come from satisfying a call of nature, or you have touched women, and
you find no water, then resort to clean earth, and wipe therewith
your faces and your hands.” What, after all, is the meaning of
“clean earth?” One cannot wash
dirt with dirt, so how is it clean, and what is clean earth washing
away?
All of
this water is part of an initial act designed to set one off in space
and time. Washing is the act of leaving the profane, everyday world,
and entering into the sacred, whether it's actually entering into a
sacred space like a mosque, or entering into a sacred activity like
prayer. Being concerned with removing physical pollution is to miss
sight of the aim of ritual ablutions, which is the removal of ritual
pollution. The everyday world is
impure, is dirty, a term we use even if, perhaps especially if, we're
not speaking of actual dirt. It's this kind of abstract dirt, this
metaphorical dirt of the world, that ritual washing prior to entering
sacred space or time or activity is meant to remove. Permeability of
nail polish has nothing to do with that.
But perhaps nail
polish is an outward sign of a more pervasive dirtiness, as far as
certain purveyors of Islamic jurisprudence are concerned. We see a
clue to this in the verse above, that simply “touching” a woman
(wink-wink nudge-nudge) apparently renders a person – that is, a
man – unclean in a way that needs purification. The burden of
ritual pollution lies squarely upon women, and interpreting nail
polish as a literal barrier to ritual purity simply adds to that
burden.
I think, rather
than inventing new polishes, what is needed is new schools of Islamic
jurisprudence.
