Answer
Wa `alaykum as-Salamu wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh.
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
She should know that this practice is totally forbidden (haram) even if it is not at the same level of the complete process of zina.
Responding to your question, Dr. Muhammad Said, Professor of Islamic Studies at Al-Azhar University, and a Visiting Professor at Tiba University, states:
Dry humping means sexual contact between two people with a fabric barrier that prevents skin-to-skin intercourse.
This is absolutely prohibited (haram) and one of the major sins. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “If one of you were to be stabbed in the head with a piece of iron, it would be better for him than touching a woman whom it is not permissible for him to touch”. (At-Tabarani)
In legal terminology, adultery (zina) would constitute the actual penetration of the male organ into the female one out of wedlock, or illegal sexual intercourse.
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) warned Muslims regarding the minor zina of the eyes, hands, legs, etc.
Not only is the evil abomination of zina prescribed as absolutely forbidden in Islam, every path or every way that leads one to this evil path is also declared as forbidden! Such is the gravity of this abomination of ‘zina’ (major or minor), that Allah Almighty commands the believers in the Qur’an “Do not even go near zina.” (Al-Israa’ 17:32)
Allah Almighty knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.