This is a woman who says: I used to perform the full ritual bath for major ritual impurity and wet some of the hair on my head out of ignorance of the ruling, and now Allah the Mighty and Majestic has guided me and I have learned the ruling.

The questioner : This is a woman who says: I used to perform the full ritual bath for major ritual impurity and wet some of the hair on my head out of ignorance of that, or of the ruling, and now Allah the Mighty and Majestic has guided me and I have learned the ruling, so what is required of me regarding the past years?

The Shaykh : What we see in such a case is that if the woman was ignorant, and the man as well: absolutely ignorant, and it never occurred to him that this was an obligatory thing, and he neglected it, then it is dropped from him and he is not obligated to make it up, because a condition of being obligated is knowledge, and how can one be obligated if he does not know? It is not within human capacity to be obligated with what one cannot comprehend. It is true that a person may be negligent in asking, in the sense that he could have asked but did not, but sometimes a person may be in the desert, far from people, far from knowledge, following what the people followed, so nothing is required of him, so nothing is required of him. And of that is: suppose a woman reached puberty through menstruation for ten years, meaning she reached puberty at the age of ten through menstruation, and she was in the desert and they did not consider puberty to have occurred until the age of fifteen, so she remained for five years not fasting, and then she learned, so she is not required to make up five years, she is not required to make up five years, why? Because of her absolute ignorance, a woman who did not know this thing and was in the desert, far from knowledge and scholars, and it never occurred to her that it was obligatory upon her, especially in the previous era when there was no telephone, no mail, and nothing. Likewise, this woman who says that she performs the full ritual bath for major ritual impurity and wets the hair on her head but does not wash it, thinking that that is sufficient, we say: as long as it never occurred to her that washing the head was obligatory and no one mentioned it to her, she is not required to make it up.
Yes.