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324chapter fiveother Arabs. ‘They would ask: “Who amongst you is Muhammad?”"72One feature of this ancient culture was long garments that protectedmen and women from the heat. Women put a scarf overtheir heads similar to the way of Bedouin women today. We knowthat KhadÊja, MuÈammad’s (ß) first wife, dressed in this way—beforethe revelation of 24:31 and 33:59. This proves that a long garmentwas primarily a regional tradition. With the revelation of verse24:31, Arab-Muslim women were asked to closely examine theirway of dressing. It turned out that, basically, they did not have tochange a lot. What was new was the possibility of displaying partsof their upper torso by way of a small neck cut in their blouses;their breasts were covered by their headscarves. No drastic changeswere needed because it was clear that the other (lower) privateparts were perfectly covered by the kind of regional clothes thatwomen wore at the time.This is how #$"isha, the ‘mother of the believing women’, wasdressed (after the revelation of 24:31 and 33:59), showing no fundamentaldifference from KhadÊja’s way of dressing. There was,in particular, no difference in the way both wore a headscarf asprotection, KhadÊja before and #$"isha after the revelation of thedress verse, against the heat. The mistake of traditional jurists wasto define jayb as describing only a woman’s breasts. What led tothis mistake was that they confused revelation with local traditionby issuing prescriptive dress codes for all Muslim women on thebasis of customary dress norms to which all Arab women adheredin the seventh century (Muslims and Christians alike). The ironyis that these supposedly ‘Islamic’ dress codes for believing womenare still shared equally by Muslim and Christian Bedouin women,for example in the region of \aur§n in southwest Syria. Thesewomen are simply following the same regional tradition as theyhave done for centuries.We should not forget that 24:31 was revealed in order to issuethe minimum dress requirements for all believing women at alltimes (in the East and the West, in cold and warm climates). Arab-Muslim women today have to rectify the fundamental mess theyhave inherited from fiqh jurisprudence. They have to remove thatfateful analogy by which jurists drew from something nonempirical72Al-Bukh§rÊ, ‘aÈÊÈ, vol. 1, 35 (ÈadÊth no. 63).