What is the cure for intrusive thoughts (waswasah) in prayer and ablution?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
A man is prone to many intrusive thoughts; he prays more than once and performs ablution more than once. What is the cure? And what do you advise him?
Answer:
He should perform ablution once, ensure it is done thoroughly, and not pay attention to the intrusive thoughts thereafter, because once he performs ablution, his state of ritual impurity is lifted. If doubt or intrusive thoughts arise, doubt does not affect certainty. Ablution is not invalidated except by certainty that a state of ritual impurity has occurred. As for mere doubt about whether it occurred or not, that does not invalidate the ablution.
A man is prone to many intrusive thoughts; he prays more than once and performs ablution more than once. What is the cure? And what do you advise him?
Answer:
He should perform ablution once, ensure it is done thoroughly, and not pay attention to the intrusive thoughts thereafter, because once he performs ablution, his state of ritual impurity is lifted. If doubt or intrusive thoughts arise, doubt does not affect certainty. Ablution is not invalidated except by certainty that a state of ritual impurity has occurred. As for mere doubt about whether it occurred or not, that does not invalidate the ablution.
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، ما علاج الوسوسة في الصلاة والوضوء؟ #فتاوى الفوزان — youtube.com
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.