Confusion over handshake issue at Irish awards

On Sunday, the Sunday Times reported that a Somali Muslim man lost an award he had been due to receive at a ceremony last Thursday at the Africa Centre in Dublin, Ireland, because he indicated that he would not shake hands with a female presenter (via Islamophobia Watch). The award was for voluntary work – in his case, raising money for Amnesty International – and the awards were "designed to highlight the positive work done by refugees and asylum seekers in Irish communities". As it happens, the paper quotes Mubarak Habib, a project officer at the Africa Centre, as saying that the re-awarding of the prize to someone else, who was not even present, was a mistake unrelated to the original winner's request, and that he would be receiving a joint award. (More: Gorey Muslim Community.)

The fact that an African Muslim's refusal to shake hands with an unrelated female would cause any issues at an Africa Centre sounds suspicious. After all, most of Africa has either a Muslim majority population, or a substantial minority, and this includes Nigeria. The female presenter is one Benedicta Attoh, a Nigerian resident in Dundalk who ran in local elections in 2004. Ms Attoh is quoted as saying, "I don't think I would have presented his prize if he wouldn't shake my hand because I'm a woman". While such an attitude could be understood from an Irish woman who was unfamiliar with these customs, Benedicta Attoh studied at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, in northern Nigeria, so it is quite difficult to believe that she would not have known that a practising Muslim man would not have shaken her hand. (Even if she had not gone to the north, I would have thought that an educated Nigerian would know this.)

Metro Éireann, who reported the story in Ireland, noted that the original winner, named Alinoor Ahmed Sheikh, also declined to shake the hand of their female reporter. Their report also said "Muslim sources who spoke to Metro Éireann said there are differences of opinion on the issue of handshaking, particularly its application in Western societies", but then gave priority to the opinion of one "Shaikh" Shaheed Satardein:

Sheikh Shaheed Satardien, a Dublin 15-based imam, said that handshaking with a person of the opposite sex is not permitted during the 'state of ablution', as Muslims get ready to say prayer. He added, however, that this timeframe should logically not clash with a period of socialising. He said most Muslims in Ireland would shake hands with persons of the opposite sex, but that there is a "terrible and complicated diversity" in terms of the Muslim population in Ireland, who follow teachings in different ways, he said. "You must break your ablution when you socialise…The Koran wants rationality in our dealings."

This conveniently conflates the issue of whether shaking the hands nullifies wudu (ablution) with whether it is permissible. They are completely unconnected; there is nothing wrong with breaking one's wudu as long as one performs the ablution again before one prays. Not every forbidden action nullifies wudu, and a number of permitted actions – including a few of life's inevitabilities like using the bathroom – do nullify it, and in the Shafi'i school of Islamic law, which is followed in Somalia, touching anyone of the opposite sex, including one's spouse, who is not a close blood relation nullifies wudu.

Satardien is well-known as a self-aggrandising "pet moderate"; he chairs the so-called Supreme Muslim Council of Ireland and claimed, an interview with Metro Éireann, to be "a respected Muslim scholar all over Africa", when in fact it is inconceivable that any Muslim scholar would even be known across the whole of Africa. The "pet moderate" tends to attack assertive Muslims or Muslim activists to the non-Muslim media, and this attitude of his is typical of that. In fact, the mainstream position of all four schools is that shaking hands with a member of the opposite sex, or indeed touching them other than when absolutely necessary, is forbidden. If any scholar takes a more liberal position where western society is concerned, they should remember that the community as a whole will not follow them, and should not present their position to the media as the truth. However, every time such claims are made, it weakens the position of those who choose to follow Islam properly; the solution is for it to become well-known that Muslims do not do this, much as our dietary restrictions, and those of some other faiths, are well-known.