Right and Left

The right hand is always preferred to the left in the Muslim tradition. There is a cosmology of left and right. In Latin, sinistra is left, and there has always been this idea that left is somehow sinister; it is the bad side. In the Muslim tradition it is not like that; there is no stigma like that about the left hand, whereas in Europe there was a stigma related to being left-handed. There is the account of a woman who went to Catholic schools and was left-handed: she got the ruler until she learned to write with her right hand — which, it is now known, actually does damage; it is one of the things that some people think results in learning disabilities and the like, because there is a confusion that takes place in the body as a result. But in the Muslim tradition there is nothing of that; there is no stigmatism related to being left-handed. ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb wrote with his left hand, and there is no stigma attached to that.

But people are supposed to eat with their right hand. The left hand is used for cleaning — cleaning the urine and cleaning the faeces. So the right hand is the one used; that is why one would never shake with the left hand — one would always shake with the right hand. So in Muslim cultures the right hand is very important, and one of the reasons that the thief loses the right hand is that when people break the social contract — and there is a deep breach of the social contract when a human being steals from another human being — there is literally a severing from the society that takes place. So to lose the right hand is a very traumatic experience in Muslim culture.

The word for right, yamīn, also means an oath: an oath is called swearing a yamīn — I swear that this is true — and one is swearing with the right. And also yumn is a good omen, and shuʾm, which is related to the left, is a bad omen. So there is a cosmology involved in it.