Islam's Reformers .pdf

face and hands, is awrat according to all the four Madh-habs.The same rule applies to women’s exposing their awrat parts,singing, or reciting aloud the (eulogy that praises our Prophet‘sall-Allâhu ’alaihi wa sallam’ and which is called) Mawlid, in thepresence of men. If a person floutingly exposes a part of his, orher, body which is not awrat with ijmâ’, i.e. which he, or she,does not have to cover according to (at least) one of theremaining three Madh-habs, he, or she, will not become adisbeliever, although an act of this sort is one of the grave sins.An example of this is men’s exposing their limbs between theknees and the loins, e.g. their thighs. It is farz for every personto learn what he or she does not know. And as soon as he orshe learns any new religious tenet, (such as, covering the awratpart), he or she has to do penance and begin to observe it, (e.g.cover the awrat part concerned).The following hadîths are quoted from the book Zawâjir[Egypt, 1356 A.H. (1937)] by Shafi’î scholar Hadrat Ibn Hajar al-Makkî [889-974 A.H. (1494-1567)].“Do not show your thigh, and do not look at the thigh ofa person dead or alive.”“Allâhu ta’âlâ will severely punish those who show theprivate parts of their body to others.”“The parts between men’s knees and navels are theirprivate parts.”“It is a grave sin to expose one’s private parts.”“Three kinds of people will never go to Paradise. Thefirst one is the dayyûth, that is, the person who takes nonotice of his wife’s relations with other men. The secondone is the woman who makes herself look like men. Thethird one is the one who continues to have alcoholicdrinks.” Women’s making themselves look like men means todress like them, to wear coats and trousers like them, to cuttheir hair like theirs, which are grave sins.“There are two groups of people who will go to Hell: inthe first group are those who carry whips or truncheonsand beat people unjustly. The second group are the womenwho show themselves undressed to men, that is, who gonear men in a thin, transparent dress. Such women go nearmen for evil purposes.”Abû Dâwûd reported Hadrat ’Âisha (radiy-Allâhu ’anhâ) as- 114 -