“We pledged allegiance to the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. He recited to us that they should not associate anything with Allah, and he forbade us wailing. Then a woman withdrew her hand and said: ‘So-and-so once helped me....’” Al-Bukhārī recorded this hadith. It does not explicitly state that the women used to shake hands with him, may Allah bless him and grant him peace; thus, a report such as this cannot be used to counter the explicit textual evidence in his statement and practice, as narrated by Umaymah bint Ruqayqah, ʿĀʾishah, and Ibn ʿUmar, as will follow.

Al-Ḥāfiẓ said: “It is as though ʿĀʾishah intended by this to answer what has been reported from Umm ʿAṭiyyah. Ibn Khuzaymah, Ibn Ḥibbān, al-Bazzār, al-Ṭabarī, and Ibn Mardawayh narrated through Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, from his grandmother Umm ʿAṭiyyah, in the account of the pledge of allegiance: ‘He extended his hand from outside the house, and we extended our hands from inside the house. Then he said: “O Allah, bear witness.”’ Likewise, the hadith that follows it, in which she said: ‘A woman among us withdrew her hand,’ suggests that they pledged allegiance to him with their hands. The answer to the first report is that extending the hands from behind a partition was a gesture indicating that the pledge had taken place, even though no handshaking occurred. As for the second, withdrawing the hand may mean holding back from accepting the pledge; or the pledge may have taken place with a barrier between them. For Abū Dāwūd narrated in al-Marāsīl from al-Shaʿbī that, when the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, received the women’s pledges, he brought a Qatari cloak, placed it over his hand, and said: ‘I do not shake hands with women....’”

He then mentioned the rest of the hadiths with the same meaning, all of which are mursal reports that cannot serve as proof. What he mentioned in answer to the two reports of Umm ʿAṭiyyah is the principal point, besides the fact that her hadith through Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān is not strong, for this Ismāʿīl is not a well-known narrator and is cited only as corroborative evidence, as I explained in Ḥijāb al-Marʾah al-Muslimah (p. 26, Islamic Office edition).

In sum, it has not been authentically established from him, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, that he ever shook hands with a woman—not even when receiving the pledge of allegiance, let alone when meeting her. Thus, some people cite as evidence for its permissibility the hadith of Umm ʿAṭiyyah that I have mentioned, even though handshaking is not mentioned in it, while disregarding the explicit hadiths concerning his refraining from handshaking. Such conduct cannot come from a sincere believer, especially since there is a severe warning for whoever