Dear friends/brothers,
My intention was not to make it a religious discussion but I wanted to say that imam sahab should have clarified also that it is not a prohibited act either. Maybe he did but not mentioned in your post. So I will assume he did.
Passing comments or opinions by imams or someone who people look up to is a big responsibility.
He indirectly and unknowingly made people doubt the act as being good.
On special occasions, hugging is allowed.** Hugging at some occasion is a sunnah** by the way. May be not two or three times but why even worry?
…
Hugging and kissing, in the way described earlier, on special occasions is acceptable. It is a cultural matter that shari’ah does not object to . It was reported that when Zaid ibn Haritha came back to Madeenah (from a journey), the Messenger of Allah stood up to greet him, he kissed him and embraced him. (Tirmidhi) And when Ja’far ibn Abi Talib the cousin of the Messenger of Allah came back for Abyssinia, after his long absence, the Messenger of Allah embraced him. (Abu Ya’la)…
Eid Greetings: Hugathon or Kissathon? | MuslimMatters.org
I did mention that he said he’s not against people doing here, where I bolded the text:
Terrible_Guy:
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This imam is more educated in his field than most if not all people here. I would take his advice on these matters more readily from anybody here. It is a fact that many people do it (or used to) because they think it’s a sunnah. Whether or not you want everything explained in terms of sunnah, religion etc. is not the point. I know that I used to do it also under that same impression. The same is the case with many others. Seeing that many people also gave up the practice after the same talk shows that they used to do it under the same impression. So there is nothing wrong with clearing that up among the masses. What I didn’t mention in my previous post was that about the hugging, he said that he’s not against it, but nobody should do it considering it to be a sunnah.
I guess it must not have been very clear. So, he did say that he’s not against people hugging or that they shouldn’t do it. As cricketplaya mentioned, it’s not a sunnah, so there should also be no expectation of reward as if it were a sunnah.