If one is certain of the state of ritual impurity and doubtful about the state of purity, he proceeds

Question : A man took a bath and was doubtful about his intention. After he finished, he said, "By Allah, I do not know whether I intended the bath for major ritual impurity or just to cool off. And look, it is winter, so today is a kind of... if Allah wills."

Answer : So what do we tell him? We say: Is it reasonable to intend to cool off in winter? That is not reasonable. There are people, I mean, who are afflicted with obsessive doubts to this extent. It was mentioned that a man went to Ja'far ibn 'Aqil (may Allah have mercy on him), who was one of the scholars of the Hanbali school. He said to him, "My master, I become in a state of major ritual impurity, so I go to the Tigris in Iraq and immerse myself in the river, and when I come out, my state of impurity has not been lifted." So Ibn 'Aqil (may Allah have mercy on him) said to him, "You have no prayer to perform; you have no prayer to perform, you."
"And I have no prayer to perform?" He said, "Because a man who goes to take a bath in the Tigris and then comes out saying his state of impurity has not been lifted is a madman. And the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: and the hunter until he catches his prey, and the madman until he regains his sanity. So among people, some are in this state. Praise be to Allah; may Allah heal them and not afflict us. But praise be to Allah, the Lawgiver has cut this matter off for us. Build upon the certainty you have and do not pay attention to it, even if Satan tells you that you did not intend it or something like that; it does not concern you. This applies to the ablution, and it also applies to the full ritual bath, and it applies to the prayer afterwards. Sometimes a person comes and does not say the opening takbir, and the strange thing is—we ask Allah to rescue us and complete the matter—that Satan makes some people complain, saying, "I am in the obligatory prayer and I cannot say the takbir; I am unable, I am unable to say the takbir. But in the voluntary prayer, I do not care; saying the takbir is normal." We looked at the prayer, why? Because neglecting the obligatory prayer is greater than neglecting the voluntary prayer, and Satan wants to corrupt his religion. And it appears, and Allah knows best, that he knows that Allah loves the obligatory acts more than the voluntary ones, so he wants to corrupt them for the creation. He does not say, "I am doing the sunnah," because there is nothing wrong with that at all. But in the obligatory prayer, he is unable to say the takbir, unable to say the takbir, and unable. We ask Allah for safety, because Satan is playing with him. The cure for these obsessive doubts is to prevent the certainty.