Hassan Bin Salim

Al-Hayat

Some scholars exaggerate the meaning of khulwa (when someone is caught in the company of an unrelated member of the opposite sex). They impose many restrictions on women in order to prevent them from committing khulwa. For them, a woman who rides in the back of a car with her driver on a public road has committed the forbidden act of khulwa. Similarly, a woman who goes to a male doctor for a medical problem and ends up alone with him in a room without a nurse has committed the forbidden act of khulwa. A woman who happens to be in the same ATM booth with a strange man has also committed the forbidden act of khulwa even though they are both only withdrawing money.



In fact, some scholars have not only warned about the consequences of such acts, they have also applied the term to almost any situation involving men and women. One scholar has recently decreed that any conversation in an Internet chat room between a man and a women is khulwa even if the man who is chatting with the woman is on the other side of the planet. In the scholar’s views, this still qualifies as khulwa.



Al-Hayat daily recently published an article regarding an academic study, conducted by a university researcher, warning about the negative consequences of khulwa  involving women and their male drivers. We hear many scholars and researchers warning about the consequences of khulwa  but we never hear them provide solutions for women who depend on drivers to get around.



The problem lies in the definition and Shariah restrictions of khulwa, not in khulwa itself. Scholars who lived hundreds of years ago defined it as a state when two unrelated members of the opposite sex meet in a place where they can have privacy and know for sure that they will not be interrupted and are certain that no one knows their whereabouts. So if the two can do whatever they want without having to worry that someone will catch them or see them, it is khulwa. However, if they feel that someone might catch them or barge into the room where they are sitting without knocking, then it is not khulwa. For it to be khulwa, the scholars said the doors should be closed and the curtains should be drawn.



Shamsodeen Bin Mofleh Al-Hanbali, a renowned scholar who died in 1361, said: “Khulwa takes place inside homes, not on roads.” Some scholars said if a man and a woman meet together in an alley and there is nobody else with them, it is still not khulwa because it has not taken place inside a house or a closed place.



As far as scholars of an earlier age are concerned, what many consider to be khulwa today cannot be called such. Many of today’s scholars describe any situation where an unrelated man and woman meet and talk as khulwa even if such things happen in a public place where the two can be seen by everyone but they cannot be heard. Of course, there are scholars today who do not call these situations khulwa because the conditions of khulwa do not apply to them.