Question:
I do a lot of travelling overseas and within Australia. I was wondering whether it is considered NAJIS to wash your clothes at laundry services offered in hotels (overseas or within Australia ones), or to use the public places where they have many washing machines and you insert coins to use, or dry cleaning your clothes at a shop?
Can you please give me an explanation why it IS or NOT considered najis as well?
Answer:
بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحِيْم
In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
It is permissible to use coin operated washing machines to wash one’s clothes; and impure clothes washed in such machines will become pure. This is because for impure clothes to become pure, they should be washed three times; and each time they should be wrung to remove the water. In washing machines, generally, clothes are washed and spun dry three times.
As for dry cleaning, our understanding is that they re-use the same chemical solvent in every wash by extracting and filtering it after every wash. [Wikipedia] The thing to note is that if any garment is impure in a wash, it will make the chemical solvent impure and as a result, all the other garments that it touches will also become impure. And when the same chemical solvent is used for other washes, all the clothes in those washes will also become impure. Merely filtering the chemical solvent will not make it pure. Hence, one must avoid dry cleaning.
And Allah Ta’ala knows best
Mufti Faizal Riza
18/4/2013
Darul Ifta Australia
www.fatwa.org.au
