Among the rulings that pertain to the ritual bath (ghusl) is the author’s statement:
“1. One ghusl is sufficient for both menstruation and major ritual impurity (janābah), or for the Friday bath and the ʿĪd bath, or for janābah and the Friday bath, provided one intends all of them, because the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: ‘Each person will have only what he intended.’”
I reply: What becomes clear to me is that this is not sufficient. A separate ghusl is required for every obligation that calls for a ghusl. Thus a woman must bathe once for menstruation and again for janābah, or a person must bathe once for janābah and again for Friday, because the evidence establishes the obligation of each of these baths independently; it is therefore impermissible to merge them into a single act. Consider the analogy: if someone still had days of Ramadan to make up, he could not combine the intention to make them up with his observance of the current Ramadan fast. The same applies to prayer and similar acts. There is no proof for distinguishing between these acts of worship and ghusl; whoever claims otherwise is kindly invited to present his evidence.
The compiler’s appeal to the Prophet’s ﷺ statement, “Each person will have only what he intended,” is misplaced here. The hadith does not carry the generality to which he alludes. Its meaning is that a person receives the outcome—good or bad—of the intention he harbors in a sanctioned act: a lawful act is accepted by Allah only when the intention behind it is sound, whereas if the intention is corrupt—for example, aiming at something other than Allah’s Face—the act will not be accepted. The continuation of the hadith itself proves this: “Deeds are only by intentions, and each person will have only what he intended. So whoever emigrated for Allah and His Messenger, his emigration is for Allah and His Messenger”—this is the righteous intention—“but whoever emigrated for some worldly gain he might achieve or for a woman he wishes to marry”—this is the corrupt intention—“then his emigration is for that for which he emigrated.”
In sum, the hadith indicates only the soundness of an act whose legitimacy in the Law is established when