Wudu or wudhu is the process of washing parts of the body using water. This is done before prayer.
It cleans the body and soul to prepare to pray. If a person does not perform wudu before praying, it is said that Allah will not accept their prayer.
Men and women are both required to do wudu. It often involves washing the hands, mouth, face, arms up to the elbows, and feet.
There are many different rules, regulations, and debates about how to best perform wudu in different situations.
Text adapted from Simple English Wikipedia, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0.
Ritual washing in the courtyard, photograph by Wolfgang Sauber via Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY 4.0.