Making Wuduu Over Socks

One of my new favourite rules or allowances has got to be wiping over socks instead of washing one's feet when doing wuduu. This practice has shaved about  5 minutes off of the time it takes me to do wuduu! So, how do you do it? What are the rules surrounding it? Well, here's what Fiqh us-Sunnah by As-Sayyid Sabiq has to say about it:


***by "normal wuduu" I mean a wuduu in which you wash your feet without socks. 

1. It is a sunnah, and therefore permissible. Any time, any place, and for anyone whether you need to or not, you can wipe over your socks. 
2. You can wipe over slippers too! The author says it is permissible (by reasoning) to wipe over any foot covering (for the rest of this post, I'm just going to say "socks" though). Just remember to take into account the conditions.
3. The socks must have been put on while in a state of purity. So first you make yourself fit to pray, THEN you put the socks on. After that, whenever you need to make wuduu, you can just wipe over the socks. 
4. The top of the sock is to be wiped. I'm sure this is as vague to some of you as it was to me, so I make sure I'm thorough and cover the top of my foot from the toes right back to where my leg meets my foot, and a little around my ankles and the sides of my foot, as well as across the top to where the the top of my foot becomes my sole (whatever doesn't touch the ground when I'm standing up). You do not have to wipe the bottom of the sock though.

I tried to find a video on youtube of someone actually doing this, just to get an idea, but I didn't find anything. When I do it though, I don't soak my socks (that would defeat the purpose), but I try not to leave too many dry spots and make sure I've at least made an effort to touch everything I need to. Also, a lot of the guys on youtube say that the sock has to completely cover the foot to the ankle and that one must be able to walk a distance in them alone, but Fiqh says this stipulation has been shown by Ibn Taimiyyah to be weak. 


Now, what invalidates the wiping. 


1. The time has expired.

Once you've put on a pair of socks that you can wipe over, you have one day and one night to wipe over them (if you are at home (i.e a resident)) which I take to mean 24 hours, but who wears their socks to bed anyway? If you are a traveller, you've got 3 days and 3 nights. Once your time is up, you've got to wash your feet again (just your feet if you are already in a state of purity), but a full normal wuduu if you're not.

2. Post-sex impurity

This one should be a given: are you really going to wear your socks in the shower? :P But, yes: if you've found yourself in a post-intercourse state, you need to take the socks off and (among other things) make wuduu normally.

3. Removal of the socks

If you have wuduu, you just need to wash your feet, but if you don't you need to make a normal wuduu again.