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292chapter fivebelieve, however, that women have every right to ask for a divorceif they have been treated badly (nushåz) or suffered because of theirhusbands’ negligence (i#r§·). And we believe that divorced womenshould get all the rights and provisions that modern family lawallows, and that includes her right to stay in the house of her husband(unless she has become guilty of ‘open lewdness’), as is prescribed bythe first verse of Sårat al-•al§q:O Prophet! When you do divorce women, divorce them at theirprescribed periods, and count (accurately), their prescribed periods:And fear God your Lord: and turn them not out of their houses [buyåtihinna],nor shall they (themselves) leave, except in case they are guiltyof some open lewdness, those are the limits set by God… ( Al-•al§q65:1)Note that the verse speaks about ‘their (the women’s) houses’, notabout ‘your (the men’s) houses’, even though the speech is onlyaddressed to men!Dress Norms for Women (LIB§S)The Issue of Women’s Headscarf (Èij§b)Muslim women’s headscarf, called al-Èij§b, has become almost synonymouswith the Islamic dress code for women. However, this contradictsthe fact that in the Book, in all eight occurrences, al-Èij§b doesnot refer to a piece of cloth at all. When the text does address questionsof dress code it uses other terms, such as al-thiy§b (outer garment),al-jal§bÊb (galabia), or al-khumår (veil). Why have exegetes beenso obsessed with treating al-hij§b as a piece of cloth? 45regarded as exceptions that are—even if theoretically acknowledged in fiqh—sociallydisapproved.45It is interesting to note that Èij§b has been discussed in fiqh literature both as asocial category (seclusion) as well as in its sense of a piece of cloth (veil), whereby onemight regard the latter as the material marker of the former. In the tradition of the\anafÊ school, three levels of Èij§b have been discussed: 1) a woman must stayindoors except in cases of necessity; 2) if she leaves the house and goes to publicplaces or other houses of non-maȧrim relatives, she must dress herself with a long,loose outer garment that, at least, covers her head and is drawn to her bosom; and 3)a woman must observe the rulings of #awra (explained below in fn. 74, p. 326–27),(see ShafÊ# #Uthm§nÊ, Ma#§rif al-qur"§n (Karachi: Id§rat al-Ma#§rif, 2005), vol. 7,214–20). From this it is clear that Èij§b has been traditionally understood as bothseclusion and veil, the latter being the visual sign of maintaining a form of seclusion