The Women's Pledge and Hind bint Utbah

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

After the men, the women of Quraysh were called to pledge, among them, veiled and unrecognised, Hind bint ʿUtbah, who hours earlier had seized her husband's beard, and who at Uḥud had mutilated Ḥamzah. (That the women wore the face-veil here is one of many proofs it was known and practised in the Prophet's ﷺ time, the claim that the niqāb is a later invention is baseless, whatever the separate fiqh dispute over whether it is obligatory.)

❧Her Retorts

The Prophet ﷺ recited the conditions of the pledge (Qurʾān 60:12). At "do not associate anything with Allah," Hind objected that he asked of women what he had not of men, wrongly assuming this a political, not a religious, surrender. At "do not steal," she said she took from Abū Sufyān's money without his knowing, and Abū Sufyān, to smooth it over, forgave all that was past. That gave her away: "Are you Hind?" "Yes, forgive what is past, may Allah forgive you." He did not answer her and moved on; it is easier to forgive a wrong done to oneself than one done to a loved one, and this was his mercy, as with Waḥshī. At "do not commit adultery," she snapped, أَوَتَزْنِي الْحُرَّة, "does a free woman fornicate?" And at "do not kill your children," she loosed the barb that undid ʿUmar: "We raised them as children, and you killed them as men at Badr", at which ʿUmar laughed so hard he fell onto his back.

❧The Pledge Without a Handshake

The Prophet ﷺ never took a woman's hand in the pledge, ʿĀʾishah swore his hand never touched any woman not his maḥram; "my word to you is my pledge to all of you." He told ʿUmar to take the women's oath. From this the scholars long dispute shaking a non-maḥram's hand: most forbid it, some permit it where there is need and no temptation, the shaykh's view being that it is makrūh, to be avoided though not sinful, the Prophet's ﷺ own example remaining the ideal.