Answered by Sidi Mostafa Azzam
1. Does touching between husband and wife break their wudu’?
2. Then if the relationship caused by marriage between husband and wife, does not make them as “mahram”, is there a need for a woman to be accompanied by her “true” mahram during a trip (e.g. Hajj), instead of being accompanied just by her husband.
3. The Questions seem to be unrelated, but the point is I would like to know the difference of relation between husband-wife, and mahrams, in relations with fiqh in wudu’ and women traveling alone.
In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful and Compassionate
Touching a non-mahram nullifies the wudu’ (provided all the conditions are present). A mahram is one who is eternally unmarriageable, through one of the following: a) kinship (e.g. one’s mother), b) suckling (e.g. one’s wet nurse), or c) affinity, i.e. relationship through marriage (e.g. one’s mother-in-law). So husband and wife are non-mahram to each other, since they are marriageable to each other. To say that a woman must be accompanied by a mahram when travelling is not precise; more precise is to say that she must be accompanied by a mahram or husband, and many of the books do, in fact, say this.
Mostafa Azzam
Amman, Jordan.