Tayammum

Tayammum may be substituted for wudhu or ghusl when access to water is restricted or impractical, namely:[2]

• When sufficient amounts of water for ritual washing are not available, including when using the available water for wudu or ghusl would leave insufficient water for drinking.
• When obtaining water is hazardous or prohibitively expensive.
• When using water poses a health risk.
• When the water available is impure.
• When you don't have potable water.

Clarifying the meaning of the verse

4:43 O you who have believed, do not approach prayer while you are intoxicated until you know what you are saying or in a state of janabah, except those passing through [a place of prayer], until you have washed [your whole body]. And if you are ill or on a journey or one of you comes from the place of relieving himself or you have contacted women and find no water, then seek clean earth and wipe over your faces and your hands [with it]. Indeed, Allah is ever Pardoning and Forgiving.[3]

Thus, in case of illness, even if there is water, one still does not need to wash.

1. Finding a piece of ground which is free of najaasah (unclean elements). This could be any kind of ground surface that naturally collects dust like rock or sand.[4]
2. Mentally make niyyah, or intention to make tayammum.
3. Recite the bismillah.
4. Place the hands on the surface of the ground.
5. Lift your hands and ensure that there is no dust on your palm surface by hitting your hands together.
6. Rub your face with both your hands. The face encompasses the right ear to the left, and the top of the forehead to the bottom of the chin
7. Rub your hands with one another.

The same conditions that invalidate wudu also invalidate tayammum. In addition, a person's tayammum is invalidated as and when water becomes available.

Tayammum is permitted on clean earth piece,[4] but the ideas about what is inside of this definition or not is depending per maddhabs. Some maddhabs accepts baked earthen pots (unglazed), clay, limestone, the tayammum stone, taahir (pure) earth, and walls of mud, stone or brick.[4]

Tayammum is not permitted on things that are not earthen, such as things that burn and turn into ashes or things that can be melted by heat.[5][4] Examples include:

• Trees
• Grass and the leaves of fruits and vegetables
• Wood
• Things made of straw
• Metals, such as iron, brass, aluminum, copper, gold
• Nylon, plastic, and walls painted with oil-based paint
• Glass

• Lemu, B. A. Islamic Aqidah and Fiqh: A textbook of Islamic Belief and Jurisprudence revised and expanded edition of Tawhid and Fiqh), IQRA' International Educational Foundation, Chicago, 1997.

• Ritual Purity in the Qur’an, hadith and fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) including dry ablution/tayammum
• Free online Islamic courses to learn more about Tayammum
• http://www.islamicvoice.com/March2006/Fiqh/