One thing that I had to refine early on in my Islām was my shoe selecting skills, as there were now different factors to take into account. The knack is to pick a style that is wudū friendly. A particular design may appear nice to the eye but the key question to ask oneself is, can I be bothered taking this on and off several times a day? Your average Muslim will automatically answer yes, but it is often only a matter of time before they descend into the practice of “heel mashing”.

Look inside any masjid before the salāh and you’ll witness an array of mangled shoe heels on the shelves; given a choice between repeatedly fastening laces or spoiling a shoe, it’s a sad fact that many of us will often opt for convenience over preservation.

I was given some Hi-Tec walking boots as a gift and dutifully wore them despite a friend from the masjid repeatedly making the observation that the brand name was somewhat of a misnomer; he would lament that whilst other musallīn were halfway home he’d still be waiting for me finish my mammoth lacing task so that we could leave together.

The easy-on easy-off approach to the foot seems to me to be decidedly Muslim, so I was a little surprised to learn that Wikipedia credits the invention of the flip flop (a.k.a chappal) to the Japanese. Surely not?

I was also amazed to find out that flip flops are called a ‘thongs’ in Australia because in my neck of the woods a thong is very definitely an article of underwear. I can now picture walking into an Australian masjid and seeing a sign that reads “No thongs beyond this point.” Well, I should hope so! Do you mean there’s a section within this masjid where thongs are tolerated?

For those of us who are at ease with wiping over cotton socks when renewing wudū we can be confronted with the following dilemma: do I defend my fiqhi stance by wiping over my socks in the communal wudū area risking condemnation from some anonymous uncle; or do I concede that en-route to the wudū chair I’ll likely soak up a fair portion of the floor’s water through the bottom of my socks and it’d probably be better to remove them first? No-one likes soggy socks and sometimes the only other alternative is to hop from seat to seat avoiding the floor until you can get within a leap’s distance of the carpeted area. A practice which is better saved for a masjid’s less busy moments.

If you ever want to take a set of the masjid’s slippers into the wudū section then please be aware that the acceptability of this action is very masjid specific. Some are very shadīd when it comes to enforcing chappal free zones, to be caught trying to keep your socks dry by wearing some slippers into the wudū area can be a big show stopper in the wrong masjid. And I say this from past experience.

Plus there’s always the difficulty when attempting to wear flip flops of getting your socks past the plastic toe divider (I don’t have plastic toes by the way in case anyone misunderstands me). That was until someone invented …

Flip Flop Socks!, mā shā’ Allāh.

However, I believe the person that I saw on a train recently has taken the principle a little too far and whilst serving as entertainment for people like me, I’d suggest it’s better not to venture outside with camel feet (unless of course you’re a camel).

Incidentally, it’s not the easiest thing to photograph a person’s foot without them noticing, there was a lengthy charade where I showed my wife various pictures on my phone before I felt that my fellow passengers were at ease with me holding the camera phone and could act without suspicion.

In my quest to discover more about the chappal I developed a theory and am looking further into it. I noted that there is a linguistic similarity between Charlie Chaplin’s surname and India’s favourite slipper. I’ve been able to establish so far that Charlie Chaplin did meet Mahatma Gandhi and so it would be logical to assume that he visited India at some point. What I’m wondering is if an early exposure to the chappal in anyway influenced his screen name. There is the interesting phenomenon that when a chappal gets wet there is a tendency for a person’s heel to slip off the sole at times causing the foot to turn. This could explain his funny walk and, by my speculation, have given rise to a new phrase “chappal-ing” - i.e. “the act or instance of slightly falling off one’s chappal.” A local could potentially have seen him struggling with his slippers in the rain and remarked “Charlie is chappaling again!” Over time this would have contracted to the phrase chaplin’. As I said, I’m still in the process of authenticating my suspicions and I have emailed a Charlie Chaplin fan club with some questions. If I ever find any proof, I’ll be sure to update everyone, in shā’ Allāh.

Until then we’ll just have to wonder if there ever was any link between Mr. Chaplin and the Indian sub-continent, but I must confess that the thought has crossed my mind before.