In that regard this is the position of Mālik and the great majority of his followers. Another group, however, denied that touching women obliges ablution altogether; this is the school of Abū Ḥanīfah. Each side—apart from the stipulation of desire—has precedent among the Companions, for I know of no Companion who made desire a condition.

The reason for their disagreement is the ambiguity of the word lams in Arabic. At times the Arabs employ it for actual hand-contact, and at other times as a euphemism for sexual intercourse. Thus in the Almighty’s words,

“or you have touched women” (al-Nisāʾ 4:43),

the term may bear either sense.

Some scholars held that the verse speaks of hand-touch. Among these, some considered the wording general while the intent is particular, and therefore required that the touch be accompanied by desire; others held it to be general in wording and intent alike, and so did not require desire. Those who imposed the condition of desire were driven to it only by what seems to oppose the verse’s general import—namely, the authentic reports that the Prophet ﷺ would touch ʿĀʾishah with his hand during prostration, and she might touch him as well.

The ḥadīth masters have also recorded, through Ḥabīb ibn Abī Thābit → ʿUrwah → ʿĀʾishah, that the Prophet ﷺ

“Kissed one of his wives, then went out to the prayer without renewing his ablution.
‘I asked, “Who else could it have been but you?” and she (ʿĀʾishah) laughed.’”

Abū ʿUmar said: The scholars of the Ḥijāz judged this ḥadīth weak, whereas the Kufans declared it sound, and Abū ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-Barr inclined to the latter verdict. He added that it is also transmitted through Maʿbad ibn Nabātah. Al-Shāfiʿī remarked, “If the report of Maʿbad ibn Nabātah concerning a kiss is authentic, I regard neither it nor mere touch as necessitating ablution.”

Those who oblige ablution for hand-touch argue that lams in its primary sense denotes physical contact with the hand, whereas its use for intercourse is figurative. When a word vacillates between literal and figurative meanings, they say, it should be carried to the literal sense unless evidence forces the figurative.

Their opponents reply that when a figurative usage becomes widespread it points more strongly to that figurative meaning than to the literal—just as the word ghāʾit, whose literal sense is a low tract of ground, has come to denote the state of minor impurity.

What I hold is that, although lams is almost equally applicable to both meanings, it is more evidently a reference to intercourse—even though that is figurative—because God, blessed and exalted, has used mubāsharah and mass as euphemisms for intercourse, and they are synonyms of lams. Interpreted this way, the verse serves as proof that a person in a state of major ritual impurity (junub) may perform dry ablution (tayammum) without rearranging its wording, as will be shown later, and the apparent conflict between the prophetic reports and the verse disappears—whereas it remains under the other interpretation.

As for those who claim that the verse intends both kinds of touch simultaneously, that view is weak. When the Arabs employ a homonymous term, they intend one of its meanings, not all of them—a point that is self-evident in their speech.