Menstruation and Henna: Pollution and Purification - The Henna Page

janaabah can pray or touch the Quran. Any prayers made in a state of janaabah are invalid. A
menstruating woman’s prayers are of no use until she has completely purified herself at the end of
her cycle.
Figure 12: Turkish Woman and her Slave, 1742, Jean-Etienne Liotard, Musee’ d’Art et d’Histoire de
Geneve (Croutier, 1989: 181)
However, washing, cleaning teeth, perfuming, and circumcisions cannot be seen when a person is
dressed. These ghusl actions do not provide an obvious visible marker that a person is purified.
When a woman marks her hands and feet with henna, she can be identified as pure, from a
“Menstruation and Henna, Pollution and Purification”, was written by Catherine Cartwright-Jones as partial completion
of the requirements for a Master’s degree in Liberal Studies focusing on henna, under the supervision of Dr. A Smith
and Dr. N Ammar, Kent State University, Kent Ohio, USA
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