" I would recommend improving personal hygine. It´ll help with the smell, I promise"
Lets get a few things straight regarding fasting of ladies in mensturation periods. I will not be surprised if what I have to say does not make full sense to the uninitiated, but it is the best I can do.
1. The term "dirty" used in association with ladies in such periods is not simply related to insuffiency or total lack of personal hygene. It is more related to staus of that person´s spritual cleanliness or spiritual fitness to qualify for worship.
2. In other words, a person can be in perfect hygenically clean physical conditions (men or women), yet may not qualify to face his creator in worship. He or she has to fulfill a certain ritual to elevate (cleanse) his spirit before he is elligible to worship.
3. Examples of such conditions that may get a person into this "unfit to worship" status include sexual intercourse or ladies mensturation periods. The situations however are not considered derogatory or humiliating in any respect. All one has to do is to go through a very simple religious ritual to restore his/her spiritual elligibility to worship.
4. I will spare you the details of the required ritual. It will suffice to say that it involves only a considered declaration of "intention" to achieve spiritual cleanliness and a few simple ritualistic steps.
5. To summerize,
- Fasting is form of worshipping,
- One needs to attain a certain level of spiritual purity to qualify for any kind of worship, which necessary level of purity may be impaired after certain specified actions.
- Such actions that may impair one´s elligibility to worship may be of natural causes hence are not necessarily humiliating for such persons (ex: having sexual intercourse, mensturation, masturbation etc.). The only requirement is that one´s impaired spiritual purity level has to be restored back to required levels - thru a simple religious ritual- as soon as such conditions or acts are over.
6. By a religious definition, ( it does not matter if she takes 16 baths a day or uses 12 diiferent parfumes all at the same time) MENSTURATION PERIOD is a stretch of time during which no religious ritual can restore a lady´s spiritual cleanliness to quallify her as fit for worshiping. She is not considered abnormal, unnatural or looked down upon during such periods, but simply excused from all obligations to worship. Say, if the period comes in the middle of Ramadan, (a) considered as unfit to worship, she will simply stop fasting (or any other form of worship) for that many days, (b) once the period is over, restore her elligibility to worship by going thru the required ritual and continue fasting for the remainder of the month.
She will however, be expected to fast for an equal number of days to make up for the missed days, after the month of Ramadan. No hard feelings anywhere....
That is just about it, folks !
, but it does not change the ancient rule). and it is understandable. can you imagine the small room with many people in (sweat (of course we all got used to be washed before going to church, but antiperspirants are too modern to be considered), candles, incense, unique smells of different people) and odor of periods of women ... blood is hard to wash out, plus smell etc... many people would faint of such bouquet of aromas.
)))