The Sunnah of the Fingernails

Asked, further, where he seeks shade when the sun grows hot, Shayṭān answered: under people's dirty fingernails. In the heat of Arabia at that time, when the temperature could reach forty-eight or fifty degrees, no one went outdoors — even the birds dropped from the sky, dead in flight — and shelter had to be sought. To go under someone's dirty fingernails means simply this: fingernails are to be kept short and clean; long, claw-like nails are no Muslim habit, and a Muslim's hands are to be kept clean, the nails short.

It is a sunnah of the Prophet, moreover, that the fingernails be cut in a particular order — not straight along from one end to the other, but one nail, then the next skipped, then the one after, working around the hand and returning at the end to those left out, in odd numbers. He is reported to have seen a man of the People of the Book cutting his nails the ordinary way, straight along from one side to the other, and to have said that this must be done differently, in opposition to their custom, yukhālif, cutting one and skipping one. Done with the intention of pleasing Allah, even so small an act as cutting the nails becomes an act of worship — it is entirely a matter of intention. The feet are the exception: there the nails are cut straight through, one side and then the other, without skipping; it is only the hands that are cut in this broken, alternating order.