Shahwa (desire: its effect on touch and ablution, on fasting and pilgrimage, on looking, on marriage by touch and on the breaking of the marriage bond)

Shahwa is the longing of the self for pleasant things. Al-Mawardi reports three views on how much of lawful desire to indulge: to suppress it, to indulge it as a help to vigour, or to keep a middle course, which he judged the best, since giving everything brings laxity and refusing everything brings dullness. ^{1 2}

• The Hanafis: touch of a non-mahram woman, with or without desire, does not break ablution, except gross contact (the rubbing of the private parts or the back passage with the erect member without a barrier that keeps the body's warmth). Muhammad holds that only the emission of a fluid breaks it, which is the analogy; the Hanafi preference is the safer view.
• The Malikis: touch by a grown man ablute, of someone who is normally aroused by such a person, breaks ablution, even if the touched person is not grown, or the touch is by a nail, hair or through a thin or thick covering. It requires desire or its presence, and a kiss on the mouth breaks it always.
• The Shafi'is: contact of skin between a man and a woman breaks ablution, with or without desire, and touching the private parts breaks it in the palm; a close relative by blood, fosterage or marriage does not break it in the sounder view; touching a child, or hair, tooth or nail, does not break it in the sounder view.
• The Hanbalis: touch of a man's skin with a woman's skin out of desire breaks ablution, citing the verse of the surah of Women (43), "or you have touched women". Touch of a beardless youth does not break it even with desire. Emission by a thought or repeated looking does not break it. ^{3 4}

• Emission from a look or a thought: the Hanafis and Shafi'is say it does not break the fast; the Shafi'is, in a weaker view, say it does if one is used to emission from looking or repeats the look. The Malikis and Hanbalis say that emission from a continued look breaks the fast, since it is an act that gives pleasure and can be avoided; emission from a thought breaks it for the Malikis and not for the Hanbalis. ⁴
• Emission through a kiss, touch or embrace breaks the fast by consensus. The seminal fluid of desire (madhi) does not break it for the Hanafis and Shafi'is, but breaks it for the Malikis and Hanbalis. ⁸

Intercourse before standing at 'Arafa spoils the pilgrimage by consensus. After standing and before the first release, most jurists say it spoils it and requires a camel; the Hanafis say it does not spoil it, but a sacrifice is due. Touch with desire, kissing, or contact without intercourse requires a sacrifice from everyone. Looking with desire until emission requires nothing for the Hanafis and Shafi'is, unlike the Malikis and Hanbalis. ⁸

• A wife: a husband may look at all of her body with desire.
• A mahram: the Hanafis and Hanbalis allow an adult to look at what usually shows, such as the neck, head, hands and feet; the Hanafis add the breast, legs and upper arms but not back or belly. The Shafi'is widen it to all but the navel-to-knee zone. The Malikis allow only face and hands. Looking at a mahram with desire is forbidden by consensus.
• A free stranger: looking with desire at her is forbidden without dispute. The Hanafis and Malikis allow looking at face and hands; the Malikis forbid the feet. The Shafi'is forbid a man from looking at the body of a free adult stranger, and forbid looking at face and hands where there is fear of temptation; in their sounder view looking at face and hands is not forbidden without desire and without fear, as the majority hold. The Hanbalis forbid looking at her whole body in the apparent view of Ahmad; al-Qadi allows face and hands with dislike when there is no desire and no fear. The jurists agree that looking at a woman with desire is forbidden except one's wife and those lawful to one. ^{8 5 6}

Where looking is forbidden, touch with desire is forbidden too, for touch stirs desire more than looking. Where looking is lawful, touch is lawful if one is safe from desire; a stranger's face and hands may not be touched even when one is safe. ^{6 7}

The Hanafis and Hanbalis hold that the bond of in-law relation is established by unlawful intercourse; the Hanbalis add sodomy in one report, but in the sounder view sodomy does not establish it. The Hanafis hold that touch or look with desire creates the same bond, so the ancestors of the woman touched and her descendants become forbidden to the man, and the measure of desire is the stirring of the organ or its increase; this is the Hanafi fatwa. Return to a divorced wife is effected by word and act according to the majority, while the Shafi'is require words. ^{6 7}

A man who cannot marry should break his desire by fasting, following the saying: young men who are able to marry, let them marry, for it lowers the gaze and guards the private parts; whoever cannot, let him fast, for it is a shield. It is disliked to seek to cut desire by camphor and the like, and forbidden if it cuts desire entirely, as castration would. ⁷