Assalaamu alaykum. Ruling on giving a photograph of the female-match to the male-match for marriage according to the Hanafi School. My arguments here are: seeing a woman whom one wants to marry is permissible. However, can we make use of a hard copy of a photo, not a soft copy. In case it is a soft copy, then is it permissible, because the photo may remain with the male-match and it may happen that the Shaytaan whispers to him and he did does not delete it and looks at it more often than what is necessary. Therein lies the temptation. There goes argument number one. My second argument is the following: seeing is permissible, but related to the hard copy of the photo, is it considered a necessity when one can make use of a hard copy photograph? Because here, you are not in a situation where it is absolutely impossible to see her without the photo. However, the brother wants a photo because he thinks that when he would see the match and did not like her, it may hurt her and she may then think, "I am not beautiful, that is why he refused the proposal." The scholars like Ibn Baaz, Ibn 'Uthaymeen, and the Hanafi scholars think that making use of a photograph is haram except in dire necessity when it is not possible to perform a sharia-prescribed act without the help of that haram thing. Is this the case at hand?

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger.

We have not found any statements from the Hanafi scholars about the ruling of giving a man a photograph of a girl whom he wants to propose to.

We have already issued fatwa 82282 about the conditions of exchanging photos for the purpose of marriage, so please refer to it.

Leaving either the hard copy or the electronic copy with the suitor may lead to Islamic prohibitions. However, there is nothing wrong for the suitor to see the photo of the girl whom he wishes to propose to before seeing her in person for the benefit to which you referred in the question, whereby some embarrassment may be avoided or for other such valid objectives.

On the other hand, the contemporary scholars differed in opinion about the photographic pictures, and they also differed in opinion about keeping such photos. There is no doubt that in order to be on the safe side, it is better to avoid all of this.

For more details, please refer to fataawa 81245, 83020 and 129812.

Allaah knows best.