Soap explanationWe use soap every single day. We use it to wash our hands, clean clothes,and really just to stay clean in general. There are bacteria everywhere and using soap to stay clean is the key to stay healthy and sick-free. Before soap was invented some cultures especially the Europeans did not know how to stay clean or healthy. You will be very surprised to hear that before the Europeans knew about soap, they washed their clothes with ashes and Pee! Yes you heard that right, pee, like the one we do in the toilet. I know, that’s disgusting. They used disgusting pee to get rid of thestains on their clothes. Surprisingly, this actually did work, butit was not healthy at all. To stay healthy, it is very important to take a bath. Back in the olden days, there were only publicopen baths.The ancient Greeks and Romans used to take a bath once a week or every other week. But when Christianity came to Europe, they did not like the public open baths because it was not good because of the men’s and women's privacy. So the Churches tried to stop the public baths,and convinced the people that, the regular public baths were immoral, sinful and were spreading diseases. Since public baths had many germs, they thought that the best way to solve their problem was to not take baths at all, because they thought it was more “clean”.

They would also make excuses saying that warming up the water during the winter would take too long. But this logic made no sense at all, because even before the Christians came, their ancestors long ago used to bathe because they knew the importance of being clean. The main reason why Christians were coming up with lazy excuses was so they didn’t have to bathe was because they didn’t want to be like the Muslims or Jews who would bathe regularly.So day by day, Christians started convincing others not to bathe by saying that it would help them be saved from diseases. Even Queen Isabella of Spain herself only bathed twice in her entire lifetime! This also convinced many people to only bathe once or at most, twice the entire year: once in the fall and the other in the spring. As you can imagine, because they barely bathed,they were really stinky all the time. In order to hide, their disgusting smell,they started to use strong perfumes. Sometimes men carried small bags with herbs that smelled good and the women used nice smelling powders.

As time went by, they truly believed that because they were not showering, they were finally different from the Muslims and Jews,and they thought that they were protecting themselves from the germs, but that is nottrue at all, because they did not keep themselves or their surroundings clean and it was nastyall around them. This bad habit of Christians not bathing and staying clean eventually led to the Black Death, which was one of the saddest historiesof all time. Between 75 to 200 million people died in Europe between the years 1346 to 1353. That many people died only in the span of7 years. So while the Europeans were suffering because they didn’t stay clean, Islam started to spread the importance of being clean.In fact, in Islam cleanliness or being cleanis considered half of the religion. In Surah Baqarah verse 222 Allah says that he loves those who purify or cleans themselves. So, from the beginning, Muslims tried to findways in order to stay clean. The most important invention in order to stayclean was soap, and this great invention was created by the genius Muslim scientist, Muhammadibn Zakariya al-Razi, who invented the recipe for the modern soap bars. People made soap before him but a lot of people thought that it was disgusting since it was made from gross animal fat. This is why barely anyone used soap.

Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi changed therecipe so that it wasn’t gross and more people would use it. He was also Iranian, born in the year 845AD and died in 925 AD. He was a chemist, physician, and philosopher who became a hero to the entire world with his new invention of the modern soap.Later many other Muslim scientist like, Al-Zahrawi,improvised the recipe of the soap bars. The Muslims used soap to clean their bodies,to clean their clothes and really to clean anything. They also wanted their soaps to smell goodso they added natural things like thyme, oranges, and lime. The Muslim inventors made the soap recipe in such an easy way, that people started to make it all the time. Soon soap became extremely common in the Muslimworld. Later that Muslim invention of hard soap spread across Europe, and showed people how to live in a clean way in their daily life. It showed them that if they stayed clean,they would be more healthy and more sick-free. That great Muslim invention basically saved millions of European's lives and made a huge difference in the world. Brother al-Razi and Al-Zahrawi were true greatMuslim heroes whose invention made a great difference in this world. May Allah (swt) reward our muslim brothers for their great invention and give them the highest place in the Jannah. Ameen.

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