- Joined
- Apr 4, 2020
It's actually simpler than that. Most people ARE right-handed. In the days before toilet paper and running water, people wiped with their less dominant hand, which was assumed to be the left hand. So that hand would be dirty. Up until the mid 20th century, people were taught to write with their right hand. There was a practical reason for that. Before the ball point pens were in wide use, if you wrote with your left hand, you'd be dragging it through liquid ink. I'm left-handed, and when I went to high school there was a thing called "erasable ink." It took longer to set so it could be erased with a standard eraser. I once did an essay test and by the end of it I had ink all the way up my arm! It just morphed into the concept of "right good, left bad."But now, when it comes to eating, there are specific hadiths that recommend eating with the right hand. And then, also, the flip side of that is that there are hadiths that condemn eating what the left.
For example, there is a hadith that says, do not eat with the left hand [quoting hadith in Arabic]: because certainly the Satan eats and drinks with his left hand.
So, does that mean that, you know, the non-physical Satan, who inspires people to work evil deeds, that Satan eats and drinks with the left hand? Some hadith actually seem to indicate that as well, to the extent of saying that if you eat with the left hand, the Shaytan or Satan is eating along with you.
Which is a bit strange anyhow to think of how exactly this would happen in practical terms. But nevertheless, these are the hadith that drive the thinking to say there’s a strong emphasis on eating with the right hand.
Muslims just stick with ancient traditions. I bet a lot of them don't even know why. It's all BS.