How is the prohibition against kissing the hand reconciled with kissing the hand of a scholar or the like?

The questioner : May Allah reward you with good. We found that the hadiths regarding a man kissing his companion’s hand, which you clarified in *Riyad al-Salihin* as having weakness in their chains, led many students to say thatThe Shaykh : you confirmed that for us and did not deny it, which indicates its permissibility; so we hope for clarification?

The Shaykh : No, there is no general statement from me in *Riyad al-Salihin* weakening all the hadiths of hand-kissing. Rather, I mentioned in *Silsilat al-Ahadith al-Sahihah* the hadith of Anas ibn Malik, narrated by al-Tirmidhi and others, in which a man asked the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), saying: “O Messenger of Allah, when a man from us meets his brother, should he bow to him?” He said: . He said: “Should he kiss him?” He said: . He said: “Should he shake his hand?” He said: .
I had mentioned in this hadith—and perhaps the doubt arose from here—an addition in some of the chains. It said:The questioner : “Should he embrace him?” He said: ... Until I reviewed all the chains of this hadith, which I strengthened by their totality, I did not find support for this specific addition: “He said: ‘Should he embrace him?’ He said: .” I did not find anything to support or strengthen this addition, so I wrote in the margin of my book, in preparation for the second edition, that this addition should be deleted. As for the prohibition of hand-kissing, it is established by the totality of the chains. However, this is also treated according to the principle of the absolute and the qualified; that is, hand-kissing is permitted in some circumstances, such as the occasional permissibility of kissing the hand of a virtuous, learned man. Therefore, anyone who attributes to me that I weakened the hadith of hand-kissing absolutely is certainly mistaken, either because I did not weaken it, or because the transmitter who attributed the weakening to me confused the prohibition of hand-kissing with the prohibition of embracing. As for embracing, as I told you, we did not find a corroborating narration for it, so it remains on the original ruling. As for hand-kissing, the prohibition is established except for what is excluded, except for what is excluded, and among those exclusions is a child kissing his father, or the reverse: a father kissing his son or daughter, let alone what was mentioned earlier regarding kissing the hand of a righteous man.