Mutual Masturbation Between Spouses

Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani
Question: Is a wife permitted to masturbate her husband and her husband permitted to masturbate her?
Answer: In the name of Allah, the inspirer of truth.
All praise is to Allah, Most Merciful and Compassionate, and all blessings and peace to our Master Muhammad, his family, companions, and those who follow them.
Ibn ‘Abidin clearly states the permissibility of mutual masturbation between the husband and the wife, quoting the Mi’raj al-Diraya as saying ‘And it is permitted to masturbate with the hand of one’s wife’. However, elsewhere in al-Durr al-Mukhtar (upon which Ibn ‘Abidin is commenting) Imam al-Haskafi quotes the Jawhara al-Nayyara as saying ‘It is disliked if one enables one’s wife … to play with one’s penis such that it results in ejaculation’. Ibn ‘Abidin explains that the ‘dislike’ here must mean, at most, somewhat disliked (makruh tanzihan) so it does not negate what ibn ‘Abidin quoted earlier from Mi’raj al-Diraya concerning the lawfulness of this act.
Ibn ‘Abidin further explains the difference between this and masturbating with one’s own hand, which is clearly forbidden except in exceptional circumstances, as being that in the former one is satisfying oneself with that which is permissible to gain satisfaction from, namely a part of one’s spouse all of whom one is permitted to seek sexual satisfaction from, whereas in the later one is not.
He adds that therefore just as masturbating with one’s hand is forbidden so is masturbating with one’s own thigh or a wall or any other object.
Based on this reasoning and the explicit text mentioned above concerning the permissibility of a man masturbating with his wife’s hand it can be concluded that the reverse is also permissible, namely the wife’s masturbating with the husband’s hand.
[Radd al-Muhtar, 2:400, 4:28, al-‘Ilmiyya]
And Allah alone gives success.
Faraz Rabbani