Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
- What you have heard is incorrect and has no basis in Islam. A Muslim is permitted to have intercourse more than once with his wife without having to perform ghusl between them.
- It is only recommended that the person has either wudu’ (ablution) or ghusl (complete bath).
In this context, Sheikh Muhammad Saleh Al-Munajjid, a Saudi Muslim scholar and lecturer, states:
If a man has intercourse with his wife and wants to come back to her a second time, he should do wudu’, because the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: “If any one of you has intercourse with his wife then wants to repeat it, let him do wudu’ between the two (actions), for it is more energizing for the second time.” (Muslim)
This is recommended, not obligatory. If he is able to do ghusl between the two actions, this is better.
Allah Almighty knows best.
Excerpted, with slight modifications, from: www.islamqa.info.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.