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women and islamic law 313beauty (decoration and adornment) while, in reality, it is her bodilybeauty (visible and hidden). The fault lies in their methodology sincethey drew an analogy between what is hidden (gh§"ib) and what isvisible (sh§hid), and they did not apply the theory of limits.Sixth Line:…or [what follows] next in line [nis§"ihinna],It is believed that this sequence permits women to reveal their hiddenzÊna to other believing women. This is incorrect because the Arabicdoes not say ‘except to believing women’ ( al-mu"min§t min al-nis§").Rather it says nis§"ihinna with the third-person feminine plural suffix.This suffix is not that of possession, that is, ‘their’, in the sense of‘their women’, because then it would mean ‘women of the women’,which is absurd. Also, the personal suffix cannot refer to the wivesof the male relatives listed above (son, brother, nephew, etc.) meaning‘except to their (m.) wives’, because this would require the thirdpersonmasculine plural hum, while we have hunna. It is nonsense toclaim that the text might have substituted for stylistic purposes hunnafor hum, given that the rules of saj# poetry sometimes make grammaticalrearrangement necessary. Semantic considerations alwaysoverride stylistic concerns, so we should not make baseless assumptionsabout stylistic necessities. We believe that nis§" in this contextcannot refer to women but rather to male persons, so that the personalpronoun suffix is a true feminine plural ‘their’ (f.), as in their(the women’s) houses or their (the women’s) books. And nis§" means,as we explained earlier, ‘the most recent’ or ‘those who follow after’,in this context meaning those who ‘follow next’ but who are notexplicitly mentioned in the verse, that is, the grandchildren: the sonsof the son, the brother’s grandchildren, the sister’s grandchildren,the husband’s grandchildren, and so forth. They are the ones ‘whocome next’ following the persons mentioned in the zÊna verse; andsince they are all relatives of the women, who is the subject of theverse, they are called their (the women’s) nis§".If we look at verse 55 of Sårat al-AÈz§b, a similar picture emerges:There is no blame (on these ladies [the prophet’s wives] if they appear)before their fathers or their sons, their brothers, or their brother’s sons,or their sisters’ sons, or their women [sic] [nis§"ihinna], or the (slaves)