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women and islamic law 325(the dress-codes of women, Muslims and Christians, in the seventhcenturyArabian Peninsula), and applied it to something empirical(the dress codes of Muslim women all over the world at all timesof human history). We have seen that such an analogy is implausiblebecause it is based on the wrong assumption that Arab womenwere, if we take the jurists’ interpretations of 24:31 and 33:59,completely covered from head to toe and had to be given permissionto reveal those parts that the two verses supposedly describe.This is, of course, historically wrong. The truth is that the Bookdescribes what women should cover (of their naked body) and notwhat to disclose (of their fully covered body).8. Supposing that a woman wants to embrace Islam and that she is,at the moment, completely naked, what clothes would she wear?The simple answer is that every believing woman, of whateverorigin and nationality, needs to follow the dress norms of the societyin which she lives. The only restriction is that she needs toobserve the lower limit of 24:31. Verse 33:59 is only for herinformation.9. The assumption of some fuqah§" that a woman’s voice is part of her#awra is downright nonsense. We hear of women who stood togetherwith MuÈammad (ß) on the streets and in the mosques of Medina,and when the Prophet (ß) asked them questions they were encouragedto answer without any inhibition or threat of punishment. Itis thus incorrect to claim that there is a vocal #awra of a woman thatis Èar§m 73 because common social practice worldwide proves thiswrong. Most societies unreservedly accept female voices in publicconcerts, operas and the mass media—and we believe that it is nota sin to encourage women to take part in such activities.Concluding Remarks on Women’s DressOne may ask why the traditional fuqah§" were not able to discoverthis by themselves. Was their command of the Arabic language reallyso bad? Not at all. The truth is that this has nothing to do with poorgrasp of grammar, syntax, and rhetoric, but with a mistaken meth-73MS refers to the popular belief of naghmat al-mar"a #awra, that ‘the melody of awoman is #awra’ or—as Ibn #$bidÊn put it—‘Do not follow (a woman) in public,because her voice is #awra’ (see Ibn #$bidÊn, \§shiyyat radd al-mukht§r, vol. 6, 406; andEncyclopaedia of the Qur"an, s.v. “Modesty.” (Angel Hsu, Shiu-Sian), 403–405).