Eating with the Right Hand

Asked how he eats his own food, Shayṭān answered: with the left hand, and with the tips of the fingers alone. The Messenger of Allah, by contrast, ate with his right hand, as the sunnah requires, and never with his left.

But I am left-handed, someone might object — even so, a person can train himself; it is not the left hand as such that is forbidden, only that nothing may be placed in the mouth with it. There is the account of one man, of a hypocritical bent, who was eating beside the Messenger of Allah and using his left hand. Do not eat with your left hand, the Messenger of Allah told him; Shayṭān eats with his left hand. I cannot eat with my right hand, I am left-handed, the man answered. The Messenger of Allah said nothing further at that moment, but after a minute reminded him again — do not eat with your left hand — and a third time, the man still going against the command of Allah and His Messenger. On the fourth occasion he said: may you never eat with your left hand again.^* Within a fortnight some manner of leprosy took hold in that man's fingers, and his hand began to fall away, bit by bit, until, before he understood what had befallen him, he was left saying that Muhammad had cursed him — he being, as it turned out, a hypocrite and a disbeliever rather than a sincere Muslim.

On another occasion a young girl was eating with her left hand; the Messenger of Allah took hold of her hand and told her that Shayṭān eats in that way, and had her eat with her right hand instead. Whatever is put into the mouth — even where one hand holds food and the other a drink — must go in by the right hand. Where a cup is held in one hand, the right hand is brought underneath it, so that in effect both hands bring it to the mouth, and nothing at all enters by the left. Parents are to watch for this in their children from a young age and correct it each time — your right hand, your right hand — until it is fixed as habit; there are people who do everything else with the left hand, yet eat with the right, once trained to it.

There is the account of one brother whose son could not be broken of eating with his left hand, and who devised his own remedy: before mealtimes he would wrap a small badminton racket to the boy's hand so that he could not use it, and made him eat that way — and within a couple of weeks the boy had learned. This is related only as an account of what one father did, not as a method to be copied; no one should bind a child's hand to enforce the point. Eating with the left hand remains, in any case, not permissible for a Muslim.

What causes real hurt, on visiting Muslim families for counselling, or attending a wedding, a walīmah, a reception, is to see Muslims served their food on a platter and then eating from it exactly as a non-Muslim would — that is not the way of a Muslim. Where a knife is needed to cut something, the right hand may still hold the knife if that is easier, but whatever then goes into the mouth is switched to the right hand regardless.

There is also the account of two Muslim students who once spent six months in a university boarding house among some seven hundred residents, and had special meals cooked for them since they would not eat what the kitchen otherwise prepared. For this the other residents called them, among themselves, "the fish-eating people," remarking besides on how strangely they ate: in the dining hall nearly everyone else ate with the left hand, while the two of them ate with the right, following the sunnah of the Messenger of Allah — not from any wish to set themselves apart, but because he had commanded it.