Fathwa, - I'm sorry, But I don't shake hands!!

Question:
I'm sorry, But I don't shake hands!!
Answer:
I'm sorry, But I don't shake hands!!
Not Just Friends: Protect Your Relationships from Infidelity And Heal
the Trauma of Betrayal
"I'm sorry, but I don't shake hands with members of the opposite sex."
This line can be heard coming from Muslims working in office settings
everywhere.
Islamic standards of modesty warn against even casual physical contact
between unmarried men and women. This, of course, can cause
uncomfortable situations in places of business where it is customary
to shake hands with colleagues. But Muslims have long known that even
casual, seemingly innocuous contact as well as casual behavior between
the sexes can lead a person astray into either marital infidelity or
inappropriate pre-marital relationships.
Until recently, it seemed that it was only Muslims that felt this way.
But in her book, Not Just Friends: Protect Your Relationships From
Infidelity and Heal the Trauma of Betrayal, Shirley Glass gives
credence to time-honored Muslim traditions on the issue of
inter-gender office relations.
Glass' main thesis is, for all intents and purposes, Islamic in
character. She asserts that unguarded, casual office relationships
between men and women often lead down a slippery slope towards
extra-marital affairs. And according to Glass, this phenomenon does
not apply solely to the spouse with a wandering eye; even strong,
nurturing marriages can be rocked by office romances.
Glass, who has studied martial infidelity over the last 25 years of
her career as a psychotherapist, found that 25 percent of women and 44
percent of men have strayed from their marriages. And although the
clich� of the office romance has been around for quite some time,
Glass says that the typical lustful physical relationships that often
develop are but one aspect of illicit office behavior. For Glass, it
is the more personal friendships that develop in the office
environment that pose a greater threat to marital stability.
Speaking recently to Connie Chung on CNN, Glass noted, "The crisis is
that men and women are working with people that they respect, people
that they have intellectual interests with, people that they share
excitement over projects, frustration over deadlines. And so the
relationship begins as a platonic friendship that's very deep and
rich. And what happens is that, over time, they begin to share more
and more of their personal lives together."
This type of intimate sharing of personal thoughts and feelings is,
Glass asserts, more detrimental to marriage because, unlike casual
sexual encounters, these interactions create strong bonds between the
people. And once this level of personal intimacy grows, the dreaded
sexual affair is just on the horizon.
For Glass, the answer to this problem is to establish what she calls
"walls and windows" by which married couples agree to keep emotional
distance from people outside the marriage while keeping open channels
within the marriage.
The resemblance to Islamic standards of modesty is uncanny, although
Glass does fail to call for the true Islamic solution, which erects
clear boundaries between the permissible and impermissible.
Glass is just one of several authors to recently take a more
conservative track regarding marriage and relationships. And in many
instances, themes that have elements of solid Islamic common sense are
finding favor over the more liberal trends that have predominated in
popular culture.