Feeling a Face Without Desire to Identify Someone Does Not Cause Prohibition by Affinity

Question

A man got up at night to wake his wife. A girl was also sleeping on the wife’s bed, whose age was nine or ten years, i.e. she was not yet of age. In order to tell them apart, he kept feeling the faces of both. Finally, having recognized her, he woke his wife. The question is: because of feeling the girl, has this man’s wife become haram for him forever?

Answer

If he put his hand on the girl’s face and immediately withdrew it because this was the girl and not the wife, then in this case the wife will not become haram. Prohibition by affinity arises if desire was already present and increased through touching with the hand, or if there was no desire beforehand and desire arose through touching with the hand — and even then only when…

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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