Rules for using and working in a Turkish bath

A question from the owner of a Turkish bath about his business, in which Jordan's General Iftaa Department answered that working there is permissible provided the sharia rules on covering and lowering the gaze are kept. ¹

The questioner said he owns a Turkish bath whose morning hours are for women, with an all-female staff, and whose evening hours are for men, and asked for the sharia ruling on this business. ¹

The Department began by noting that Islam gives weight to cleanliness and purity, and that the bath meant in the hadith reports is the public bath used for washing and treatment, which today resembles the steam baths of weight-loss clinics. ¹ It said men may enter with their nakedness covered and their gaze lowered, while it is disliked for women to enter without an excuse such as treatment or a cleanliness that cannot be had otherwise, citing a hadith that censures a woman undressing outside her home and a passage from the Shafi'i work Mughni al-Muhtaj. ¹ Where a woman needs to enter, she should make sure that only women run the place, keep the limits of covering in front of other women, avoid clothing that exposes most of her body or touching private parts without necessity, and lower her gaze. ¹ It concluded that there is no objection to women working in such places provided these rules are kept, lowering the gaze and touching other women only as far as needed. ¹

Jordan's General Iftaa Department published this fatwa on aliftaa.jo as no. 3801, dated 10 September 2023. ¹ The museum records this text as a historical document attributed to the body or scholar that issued it; it issues no ruling of its own.