Zakariyya said, “Musʿab remarked, ‘I have forgotten the tenth—perhaps it was rinsing the mouth.’” [Narrated by Muslim]

The traits of the fitrah are the natural state upon which Allah originated His servants. He planted within their very makeup the impulse to practice them, the inclination toward them, and the appreciation of their beauty, while causing them instinctively to loathe whatever contradicts them. If a person were to abandon these traits, his appearance would cease to resemble that of human beings—so what can be said of someone counted among the people of Islam, the religion of the fitrah?

A person whose innate disposition remains sound and unspoiled by the surrounding environment is driven by that very disposition to dislike anything on his body that is not an adornment, and to love these inborn traits even if no revealed law had endorsed them. How much more should he love them now that the divine laws of the prophets have all sanctioned them!

Al-Hafiz al-Suyuti—may Allah have mercy on him—said, “The best explanation of the fitrah is that it is the ancient Sunnah chosen by the prophets and upon which the revealed laws agree; it is as though it is an inherent matter upon which they were created.”