Purity: Ruling on Obsessive Doubt (Waswās) Concerning Purity and Impurity

Practical Laws of Islam as per the teachings of Ayatullah Sistani

Ruling 223

If an obsessively doubtful person (muwaswis) who does not attain certainty like normal people do in the washing of an impure object washes it in the same way that normal people wash it, his actions are sufficient to deem the object pure. From an Islamic law perspective, being abnormally cautious in matters of purity and impurity is not approved, and there is no need for any person, obsessively doubtful or not, to investigate and see if his body, clothing, or something else has become impure or not. Furthermore, it is not necessary to carefully see if something impure has made contact with something else, and if it has, whether wetness has spread to it or not. In all of these cases, the objects are ruled to be pure.

-Ayatullah Sistani, Practical Laws of Islam, Purification (Taharah)