but it is disliked in urban settings, as it seems, because it becomes frequent and not everyone deserves it. If a person does it with some people and not others, those who are left out may feel slighted and think that their rights have been neglected and others have been favored over them. The completion of the greeting is the handshake. Know that some of the imams, like Abū Ḥanīfah and his companion Muḥammad, have gone to the extent of disliking embracing, as reported by al-Ṭaḥāwī, contrary to Abū Yūsuf. Among them is Imām Mālik. In "al-Ādāb al-Sharʿiyyah" (2/278), it is mentioned: "Mālik disliked embracing someone returning from travel and said it is an innovation." He excused the Prophet's (ṣallá Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) action with Jaʿfar when he returned by saying it was specific to him. Sufyān said to him: "You cannot specify without evidence," and Mālik remained silent. The judge said: "His silence is evidence of accepting Sufyān's statement and agreeing with him, and this is correct until evidence of specification is established." It has been previously mentioned in the words of Imām al-Baghawī that the mouth should not be kissed. Shaykh Ibn Mufliḥ explained this in "al-Ādāb al-Sharʿiyyah," saying (2/275): "Kissing the mouth is disliked because it rarely occurs as an honor." It appears to me from another perspective, which is that it was not narrated from the predecessors, and if it were good, they would have preceded us in it. How excellent is the saying: "All good is in following those who have passed, and all evil is in innovating by those who came after." So it is astonishing from that Dr. al-Ḥalabī, the storyteller preacher who set himself up to refute the scholars of the Salafis and their followers, tracking their slips and their statements that contradict the scholars' opinions, as he claims, while forgetting himself. I heard a tape of his in which he criticizes someone for the illegitimacy of kissing the mouth, and he declares that it is like kissing the forehead and the hand and that there is no difference! Thus, he fell into the contradiction he criticizes the Salafis for, and if any of them had made this (brilliant!) analogy, he would have thundered and raged, shouted and lamented, and gathered all he could from the scholars' statements! But as for him, there is no harm in his contradiction!