The Meaning of the Hadith: "Whoever touches the pebbles has spoken in vain"
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner:
He also has another point. He says: It confused me while I was reading in the hadithSahih Muslim 857b "and whoever fiddles, he has no Friday prayer." And why, Shaykh, did you specify pebbles? Is it touching pebbles?
The Shaykh:
The ground. The intention is not specifically pebbles; the intention is the ground. So the one who scratches in the ground and is occupied with fiddling and does not listen to the sermon has fiddled, meaning he has no reward or merit. Yes.
The presenter:
Also touching the handkerchief and the like.
The Shaykh:
There is no harm in it when there is a need. There is no harm. But without a need, he should not fiddle with anything, but rather focus on listening to the sermon. Yes.
He also has another point. He says: It confused me while I was reading in the hadith
and he who touched pebbles
ومن مس الحصى فقدThe Shaykh:
The ground. The intention is not specifically pebbles; the intention is the ground. So the one who scratches in the ground and is occupied with fiddling and does not listen to the sermon has fiddled, meaning he has no reward or merit. Yes.
The presenter:
Also touching the handkerchief and the like.
The Shaykh:
There is no harm in it when there is a need. There is no harm. But without a need, he should not fiddle with anything, but rather focus on listening to the sermon. Yes.
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، برنامج (فتاوى) (185) لمعالي الشيخ صالح الفوزان بتاريخ [1440-06-16] - كبار العلماء — youtube.com (18:13)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.