and that becomes as natural to them as an inborn instinct.

Whenever a person passes by someone else, he should greet him with salam. If the Prophet ﷺ would do so even with children, how regrettable it is—may Allah protect us—that some people walk past fully grown adults and do not offer them salam. Their omission may not be due to boycott or hatred; rather, it is indifference, neglect of the sunnah, ignorance, and heedlessness. Although they may not be sinful—since they did not intend to shun the other person—they have nevertheless missed out on tremendous good.

The sunnah is to greet everyone you meet and to be the one who initiates the greeting, even if the other person is younger than you, because the Prophet ﷺ always initiated salam with whomever he encountered, though he was the most honored of people.

If you begin with salam, you gain many benefits, among them following the Messenger ﷺ. You also become a means of reviving this sunnah that has died out among many people. It is well known that whoever revives a sunnah earns a double reward: one for acting upon it and another for bringing it back to life.

Furthermore, by initiating the greeting you prompt the other person to reply, and his reply is a communal obligation (fard kifayah). Thus you become the cause of fulfilling this communal duty through him.

For that reason beginning the greeting is better than responding to it. Although returning the salam is obligatory and initiating it is recommended, the recommended act is superior here because the obligation depends on it.

This is one of the questions with which certain scholars would puzzle their students, saying, “We have a sunnah that is superior…"