Recordings › Monday Nights with Mufti #198 | Q&A Unscripted & Unrestricted! 😉 | Mufti Abu Layth · 19 Jan 2021 › Segment 35 of 41
Is it haram to eat with my left hand?
hadeeth ahadith ahaadeeth hadis hadees ahaadith imam bukhari sahih al-bukhari sahih bukhari saheeh al-bukhari saheeh bukhari imam al-bukhari muftis halaal permitted lawful haraam forbidden jahannam jahanam jahannum ummah ummat community bismillah ir-rahman ir-rahim bismillahir rahmanir rahim bismillahi bismillah al-rahman al-rahim as-salamu alaykum assalamu alaikum assalamualaikum salaam salaams salam alaykum wa alaykum as-salam peace greeting aadaab adaabEating with the left hand: the hadith of Umar ibn Abi Salama
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This segment2:36:50 to 2:43:20 · 6 min 30 sGeneral teaching
The answer in brief
machinesummary, machine-writtenEating with the left hand is not haram, Mufti Abu Layth says; the right hand is good etiquette taught to a child, so do it if you can.
In more detail
A left-handed patron, tired of being told to switch, asks about the hadith in which the Prophet told someone to eat with his right hand. Mufti Abu Layth says this is a matter of adab, eating etiquette, not of halal and haram. He explains that the main hadith, in al-Bukhari and Muslim, concerns Umar ibn Abi Salama [?], the young stepson raised in the Prophet's house through his mother Umm Salama [?], whom the Prophet told, 'Boy, say bismillah, eat with your right hand and eat from what is in front of you', teaching a child the table manners of a time when people ate from one tray. He says eating with the right hand is still Muslim etiquette and he supports it, with hygiene behind it in a hot climate with little water, but if it is difficult or inconvenient one can eat with the left hand, as it is not haram. He adds that he is left-handed himself, was taught to eat with his right, and later became ambidextrous.
Question as read aloud · questioner not identifiedCould you talk about the man who was eating with his left hand whom the Prophet told to eat with his right hand? I'm left-handed and people are always telling me it should be easy to switch. I use my right hand for food you can eat with your hand and my left for utensils; it's hard to handle a utensil with your non-dominant hand.
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Position stated
Mufti Abu Layth says eating with the left hand is not haram.
“but I'm just saying if you can't fine eat with the left hand it's not Haram”
Category: ruling
Kind: general teachingTranscript
machine2:36:50 to 2:43:20 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary
we understand the prophet to be in that sense because of his mission and everything and who he was for the whole of Humanity as opposed to isolate tribes he was the greatest Prophet but it doesn't mean that let's say if a particular Prophet was incredibly strong let's just say that it means now oh does it have to mean the prophet was also stronger you know doesn't it's not a competition so if you say yfam was incredibly you know the most uh you know so handsome now so we we don't need to think oh my God before we get insec
let's say but the prophet Sall Ali was was more handsome than I mean the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam we believe was incredibly handsome but I'm not saying that we have to react in an insecure Way by saying that I feel that's just insecurity Salam mu muslima convert you're doing it you're doing it I was wondering if you could talk about the man who was eating with his left hand and the prophet uh told him to eat with his right hand I'm left-handed uh I'm a left-handed convert and people are always telling me it should be easy to switch it drives me nuts cuz I use my right hand for foods you can eat with
your hand and I use my left for my utensils it's hard to handle a utensil with your non-dominant hand meanwhile I watch all these people using utensils in their right hand and eating bread with their left I'm just that's the Emoji can you please enlighten me it's a very good Hadith a very good question about a Hadith you see this is a cultural issue it's to it's to do with the adab of eating etiquette it's not about halalam okay um the prophet addressed and first of all this Hadith
mainly the main Hadith like the one in bukari and Muslim is uhma which was the the kind of like fostered son of the Prophet because I say fostered son because the prophet his mother was Umma who the prophet marries so he's a young boy and he would be there in that house with Umma so hence the prophet says in the in the other variant of the Hadith in the Fuller variant so there's a Hadith that reads Sam uh no sorry it reads uh yeah
that say and eat with your right hand and eat with that which is in front of you now the more complete narration is um oh sorry that one I think they just say eat with your right hand and eat what is that's Inari and Muslim complete version is the prophet says he says boy like he like like I suppose today boy sounds rude but yam is n rude in Arabic it's like saying little boy uh he tells him that he says Sam
sayah eat with your right hand and eat with the food that is in front of you in the tray because what they would do is they would eat from a kind of uh a a large kind of tray which they would just put the food on now it was deemed not only rude but it was poor etiquette to just kind of like start you like you're sitting there and I'm e in front of your part and I'm eating you know like you've got food there the same food eat in and here really the prophet was just teaching as
a kind of as a you know as a father figure to this child teaching him basic table manners of the day and age and the prophet said look Say bah like the prophet tells him don't because he was just H diving in and he was a young boy little boy so the the prophet says look don't do that say bis eat with your right hand as in don't go like this with all with all this stuff just e eat nicely and eat from the part that's in front of you and work your way in so this is etiquette yes it is still deemed
Muslim etiquette uh to eat with the right hand if it's not not possible for you or it's very or if it's not very if it's inconveniencing and difficult do then I feel fine you know you can eat with the left hand it's not a it's not a Haram kind of issue it's nothing like that if you can then because it's deemed Islamic ethic see what it is is that it's not a problem but it's just if you you know it's either you can educate the whole world or you can just like oh what the hell I'll just pick it up with my I'm left-handed as well by the way um
it's my left hand right so I am left-handed but I uh as a child because my parents said to me you have to eat with your right hand so i' always eaten with my right hand uh that said I'm now uh As I Grew Older I became ambidextrous I learned how to write with both hands and that kind of confused me with my left and right so I because when I think left I always think of the hand I write with this is is probably telling of some mental disorder I've got so I always think ah left but since I can write with both hands it kind of confused me I think which one is
it ah yeah so the confus you know this the confusion the problems the challenges of being a left-handed person but yeah if you can eat with your right hand fine it will just it's no problem but if you're on your own eating uh or if you want to you can eat with your left hand it's not you know this isn't a Haram issue the in Arab etiquette that's how it was deemed this was deemed good etiquette that they deemed the right hand and obviously there were hygiene issues involved you have to remember that look people didn't always have water and they did go to the toilet and you know there was certain things that it was a hot climate and you have to look take everything into consideration
look at the whole thing and they had certain eate man it's not that they didn't wash their hands whenever they could they did a person would do wo five times a day but still you know as an extra hygiene that they they used a particular hand for always eating um there's nothing wrong with that and and I I'm fine with it I support eating with the right hand but I'm just saying if you can't fine eat with the left hand it's not Haram okay cool I hope that helps uh quick um recent talk of neurolinks and brain chips being a thing thing will
Paragraphs overlapping 2:36:50 to 2:43:20. Full text on the recording page.
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Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2021-01-19-S35, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/hv-blbvtr4m/s/35/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2021, January 19). Is it haram to eat with my left hand? [Video, segment 2021-01-19-S35, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/hv-blbvtr4m/s/35/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2021. "Is it haram to eat with my left hand?" Video, segment 2021-01-19-S35, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded January 19, 2021. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/hv-blbvtr4m/s/35/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2021-01-19-S35, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{Is it haram to eat with my left hand?}}, year = {2021}, month = {1}, date = {2021-01-19}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/hv-blbvtr4m/s/35/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/hv-blbvtr4m/s/35/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2021-01-19-S35, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
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