Beard touching

Recently, a friend of mine grew some facial hair. A beard to be exact. I ran into him in an elevator and I asked whether it's polite to ask to touch someone's beard. Not that I wanted to touch it, I was just wondering if it's polite for one man to ask to touch another man's beard (I'm discounting the need to touch a woman's beard for a moment). Anyways, this friend, while a bit shocked at the question, did want to ask some followup questions.

Under what circumstances would that be needed?

Well, for example, in a beard judging competition, it is not enough to just look at the beard, but one must also touch it, nay, stroke it, to judge other important qualities, such as girth, flow, volume, resilience, malleability, silkiness, waviness, curliness, thickness, wooliness, springiness and general beardliness.

Why are you asking?

I think it is possible to offend someone by touching thier beard, in that it may be against their religion. I suspect Zeus is against beard touching, or even Thor and possible Ganesh and the Dalai Lama.

Anyways,I didn't up touching his beard. But he did concede that it is more polite to ask than just to touch it without asking.