FACE-VEIL: REPUGNANT INNOVATION
NIQAB (FACE-VEIL):
AN EXEMPLARY SUNNAH OR A REPUGNANT INNOVATION?
النقاب
سنة مثالية أَمْ بدعة ممقوتة؟
BY
ISSAH HASSAN TIKUMAH
{{و إذا فعلوا فاحشةً قالوا وجدنا عليهآ ءاباءنا والله أمرنا بها قل إن الله لا يأمر بالفحشاء أتقولون على الله مالا تعلمون}}.
سورة الأعراف
And when they commit an immorality, they say, “We found our fathers doing it, and Allah has ordered us to do it” Say, “Indeed, Allah does not order immorality. Do you say about Allah that which you do not know?” (Qur’an 7:28)
© ISSAH HASSAN TIKUMAH 2010
All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced stored in a retrieved system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission of the Publishers
ISBN: 978 - 125 – 310 - x
Printed 2010.
By
Ahmadu Bello University Press Limited, Zaria,
Kaduna State, Nigeria.
Tel.: 069879121, 08065949711.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter page
Introduction - - - 1
1. The Modified Niqab of Today- - 12
2. Blind Copying is not Sunnah - - 15
3. Niqab is not for General Public - 20
4. Dialectical Incompetencies of the
Protagonists of Niqab - - 24
5. Al-Uthaimin’s Untenable Rejection of the
Condemnation of Compulsory Niqab - 31
6. Plain Contradictions - - - 42
7. Islam’s Friends or its Enemies? - - 49
8. Some Worthwhile Questions - 62
9. The Problem with our Thinking Today - 67
Conclusion - - - - 86
References - - - - 93
Introduction
After the death of the holy Prophet Muhammad (may the peace and blessing of Allah be upon him = pbuh), millions of fabricated statements and injunctions attributed to him were found in circulation around the Islamic world. Later on, Imam Muhammad Ibn Isma’eel Al-Bukhari (may Allah be pleased with him) had a dream in which he found himself standing behind the holy Prophet (pbuh) and, with a fan in his hand, driving away flies attempting to land on the holy Prophet (pbuh). When he narrated his dream to a learned man, the learned man interpreted the dream to mean that Imam Al-Bukhari would clear the holy Prophet (pbuh) of all the false pronouncements which had been attributed to him. Indeed, the dream was well-fulfilled. Out of about seven hundred thousand hadiths (statements/discourses/injunctions of the Prophet) collected and researched by Imam Al-Bukhari, he selected less than ten thousand hadiths as impeccable – dismissing all the remaining hundreds of thousands as baseless or unreliable. His authentic selection was compiled in what is now known as Sahih Al-Bukhari, the second most important text in the Islamic faith. Other scholars, including Imam Muslim, Imam Annasaa’i, Imam Abu Da’ud, Imam Ibn Maajah, Imam Attirrmidhi, etc later followed the footsteps of Imam Al-Bukhari and also made invaluable contributions in that respect. The latest most commended effort on this subject was undertaken by the late Imam Muhammad Naasiruddin Al-Albani of Syria, who died few years ago after publishing more than one hundred relevant volumes.
May Allah reward with abundant generosity the immeasurable efforts of all the scholars mentioned above. However, having had the authentic hadiths sorted out from the junk of sacrilegious fabrications, what is most urgently and desperately needed now is the right understanding and correct meanings of these authentic hadiths. For an authentic hadith wrongly conceived and consequently misapplied might just be as dangerous as a fabricated one. Indeed, over the centuries, many an authentic hadith has been quoted to assert such conspicuous nonsense and absurdity from which the Prophet (pbuh) would undoubtedly have distanced himself.
It is instructive to note that (not only on hadith but) even on the Holy Qur’an itself, the Prophet (pbuh) cautioned us not to attempt applying any verse of the Qur’an we do not sufficiently understand. The hadith is stated in Sahih Al-Bukhari as follows:
Recite (and study) the Qu’ran as long as you agree about its interpretation, but where you have any difference of opinion (regarding its meaning) then you should stop for the time being. (Al-Tajreed Al-Sareeh, p415).
The simple incontrovertible logical fact is that one cannot be reasonably expected to correctly apply a rule he does not sufficiently understand; one who is out to apply a rule he does not really understand is not unlikely to do just the opposite of what the rule actually requires him to do. That is why Islam gives primacy to knowledge and understanding before any action can be taken. And it is the consensus of all Islamic authorities that Islam is a religion to be practised based on knowledge and understanding and not on the basis of blind imitation (Al-Qaradawi, in Bello, 2003:84). It is true that some rules in Islam cannot be rationalized, but that applies only to matters of ibadah (ritual or devotional practices), such as salat and hajj. For instance, it is not understood why the Morning Prayer is two rak’ahs while the afternoon prayer is four, or why the Ka’abah should be circumambulated seven times instead of three or nine times. Shaikh Al-Qaradawi (1991:51-52) expressed the point in the following manner:
…ibadah is the cause and purpose of the obligatory duties which are not, and can never be, an object of assessment. However, the teachings which are aimed to regulate our lives can be, and must be, analysed.
Al-Qaradawi (opcit: 55) went further to point out that failure to understand the rationale behind Islamic rules before applying them “will lead to dangerous contradictions…”
Unfortunately, the idea of non-rationalization of rules is often extended beyond the sphere of ibadah to cover all other aspects of our lives. We hardly care to consider the rationale behind a particular socio-economic or political rule so that we may determine whether the application of such a rule in a particular context will achieve the objective of the rule or will rather defeat the very purpose of that rule. If anyone among us ever cares to think of the reason behind a rule we accuse him of unfaith or call him a controversial person. No wonder, therefore, that the entire life of today’s Muslims is a contradiction; every aspect of our lives today is the opposite of what we tell people that Islam represents. We say to the world that Islam is a religion of tauheed (monotheism) so a Muslim should fear none but Allah and Allah alone, yet whereas the non-Muslim Euro-American can point his finger into the eyes of his president/prime minister if the president/prime minister does wrong, we fear our brutal leaders much more than we fear Allah Almighty so we can never question their unjust leadership. Whereas the non-Muslim Euro-American leader and the common citizen of his country are both equal before the man-made law of their land, our leaders and all their relatives and friends are known for living above the law – including the Law of Allah the Almighty. We sing into the ears of the whole world that Islam is a religion of racial equality and yet, whereas the non-Muslim Americans have imbibed the principle of equality of all races to the extent of voluntarily electing a black man – their former slave, a foreigner – as their president, even different tribes of the same race in any of our Muslim countries are yet to view each other as humanly equal. To the extent that even our mosques are still organized along tribal lines so that a learned man will enter the mosque and be led in prayer by very ignorant people who will torture his feeling with their terrible recitation of the Qur’an, all because he is from this tribe or that country so he is not fit to lead the prayer – that is regardless of the Prophet’s clear ruling that the one to lead people in prayer should be the most learned of them all in the Qur’an. We are ordered to pray at specified hours five times a day so that we may learn to keep to time in our daily lives, yet we remain completely indifferent to time in our daily activities and transactions – in contradistinction to the non-Muslim Westerner (who never prays but) whose 3:00pm really means 3:00pm and not a minute earlier or later than that. Our daily most frequently repeated declaration is Allahu Akbarr, which means “Allah is the Greatest”, yet tribalism, racism, nationalism, materialism and other worldly isms exert much greater influence on our perceptions and attitudes than the Command of Allah the Greatest. We announce to the world every day that Islam is a religion of unity and brotherhood, yet we are the most disunited and brotherless of all people in today’s world – to the extent that we are the only religious people who fight and kill among ourselves anywhere in the world today. We tell the world that Islam is a religion of knowledge, that the first verse of the Qur’an to be revealed commanded man to read, yet we have the worst illiterates everywhere in the world; not only that the bulk majority of our masses cannot read or write, but even the few who are capable of reading and writing will neither read nor write anything. Can you imagine that you wrote a book and people who hold university degrees set out holding clandestine meetings of conspiracy against you (merely on the basis of the title of the book, together with wild rumours being spread about its contents) without caring to read the book (which contains 60 pages only)? That is why the terrible condition of today’s Muslims is really worrying – because it is hard to imagine how people who will never read can ever change for the better. People who will not read, will not discover; and people who will not discover, will not progress. We tell the world that Islam cherishes hard work, human dignity and pride, yet we are not only known for our laziness in places of work and learning but also we have the lion’s share of the population of beggars anywhere on this earth. Our scripture is called Al-Qur’an Al-Hakeem, meaning, “The Wise Qur’an”, yet all our activities and programmes today are characterized by folly and stupidity in the form of misplacement of priorities. We disdain “Western education” as anti-Islamic, yet we are quick to gulp and devour any convenient facility or product (such as mobile telephones, plushy cars, etc) manufactured with the same “Western education”. We say to the world that Islam views the woman with the highest regard, yet the pathetic degration of our women speaks for itself.
In a nutshell, let me repeat, every single aspect of our lives today, even inside the mosque, is the opposite of Islam. As the erudite savant of Islam Sayyid Abul A’la Maududi (Murad, 1985) rightly pointed out, it is all because of our stinking hypocricy (that is, professing Islam all the time while doing the opposite of Islam every time) that Allah has left us to be dominated and oppressed by sincere unbelievers everywhere on earth – including inside our own homes – today. Today’s Muslims mean nothing but severe insult to Islam. The non-Muslims of toady are much closer than the Muslims to almost every noble ideal that Islam represents. The erudite Islamic battler, Shaikh Muhammad Kutb of Egypt (1991:178), in his usual unapologetic frankness, has tersely summarized the point in the following graphic expression:
One does not need to make any much effort before he will discover that the present situation of Muslims is the worst they have passed through in the whole of their history. And one does not need to make any much effort before he will discover that the bad state of Muslims today is much worse even than that of the Jaahiliyyah (absence of Islam = the West) surrounding them. In fact, it appears that the modern Jahiliyyah is at the top of a tower while the Muslims are living in the muddy surroundings of that tower.
Indeed, the holy Prophet (pbuh) told us, in a hadith reported by Muslim on the authority of Anas, that on the Day of Judgement when his followers will drink from the well of kautharr, a man (“Muslim”) will be denied access to the water of kautharr. Then he (the Prophet) will say to (the Angels): “He is among my followers!” But the Angels will say: “No, (count him not among your followers) for you do not know what he initiated after you [i.e after your death]”
It is all part of our contradictions that we create enormous but unwarranted problems in society today in the name of Islam while asserting that Islam came to solve the problems of man and society. Can you imagine that at a time when authorities are struggling to cope with rising incidents of impersonation and fraud in examinations in our educational institutions, instead of trying to help the situation, we are insisting on students’ “right” to write examinations under the cover of niqab? When there is a problem in society, we would present Islam as an alternative problem rather than a solution. And sometimes the alternative problem we present in the name of Islam is, quite ironically, even worse than the one we are condemning. Imagine, for instance, that we are faced with the problem of nudity on our university campuses. Then, as a solution to that problem, we are offered a type of dress (niqab) which facilitates examination malpractice and various forms of security problems. The obvious truth is that it would take some (great deal of) explanation to convince an average thinker that nudity has negative impact on academic life. But as for examination malpractice, its negative effect on academic life is so direct and straightforward as to be perceived even by a naive observer. In that case, quite ludicrously, the solution offered is worse than the problem itself.
One only has to read the political histories of some Muslim societies (of the Arab world) in order to glean the circumstances and frustrations that might have pushed some nationalist leaders to stage revolutions, side-line Islam and silence the so-called Islamic scholars, and then adopt arbitrary (or secular) style of rulership. The so-called Islamic scholars often portrayed Islam as an indelicate legislation which has little regard for the well-being of society. You would see criminals exploiting a particular practice of Islam to unleash terror and confusion on society and yet the so-called Islamic scholars would not only remain silent watchers over the matter but would also move rather sharply to curse and condemn the rulers for challenging the authority of Allah and His Messenger if the rulers made any attempt to check that particular religious practice being abused. These so-called Islamic scholars often behaved in such a way as to tell the world that provided that a problem exists in the name of Allah or His Messenger then the problem has to be allowed to nourish and flourish – nothing can be done to solve it because it is perpetrated under the cover of a religious creed. Islam was thus portrayed as a fortress (rather than repellent) for crime and indiscipline. In such situations whereby supposed Islamic scholars adopt an irresponsible or indifferent attitude to societal problems in the name of religion, it is not unexpected that a nationalist leader (who may not be sufficiently learned in the religion but has his society or nation at heart) would stage a revolution, dismiss Islam as a force of backwardness and irresponsibility, and then proclaim a secular legal code in the hope of salvaging his people. I had my personal experience in this respect very recently. In the year 2008, I published a book titled “The Abuse of Islam and the Dormancy of Islamic Scholars: Evidence from the Misuse of Niqab (Face-Veil) in the Nigerian Society”. No one was able to deny any of the problems I pointed out in connection with the use of the face-veil in the Nigerian society. What the so-called Islamic scholars actually did was to accuse me of insulting the wives of the Prophet (pbuh) - yes, because the Prophet’s wives wore niqab so if criminals now adopt niqab for their operations, they should be allowed to hold society to ransom in the name of the wives of the Prophet (pbuh). In a situation like that, only by force can the government stop societal problems springing from the abuse of religious practices – because the government can never rely on the sense of goodwill of the so-called religious scholars for solutions to religious abuses.
This book is a follow-up to the one I have just mentioned above. Three salient points need to be clarified from the very outset. One, an idea may differ from its practice. Although the concept of niqab is there in Islam - in the sense that Islam prohibits looking at a woman’s face with sexual feeling – yet the practice (of covering the face and moving undercover) as we now have it is Islamically abominable. Identity-hiding niqab, one of the most pronounced of the contradictions in the lives of today’s Muslims, is only one of so many Islamically absurd things being done today in the name of Sunnah. The common problem is that most often we see a text saying that the Prophet (pbuh) did A or B. But as to how exactly the Prophet (pbuh) did that A or B, it is not clearly explained in the text. Then in our attempt to translate this text into practice, we end up prescribing something absurd and then tell people that “this is the sunnah of the Prophet (pbuh)!”, that the Prophet ordained it so it must be done as such. Two, bid’ah (innovation) does not mean only what was not done by the Prophet (pbuh). Something may have been done by the Prophet (pbuh) but if it is copied or applied off-context, then it becomes a repugnant innovation. For instance, there is no question at all that the Prophet (pbuh) and his companions prayed five times daily. However, if someone observes the same five daily prayers but alters their hours or their number of rak’ats, then his prayers become a despicable innovation within the laws of Islam. Three, it is true that certain texts in the Qur’an or hadith are subject to diversity of interpretation. However, it is simply incorrect to think that any interpretation can be accepted. There are certain specific rules governing the acceptability of the interpretation of religious texts in Islam. One of such rules is that an interpretation should not contradict or run contrary to the general nature of Islam. In this case, it is crucial to note that by the consensus of all authorities, the Islamic law, having proceeded from the infallible wisdom of the All-knowing Allah who legislates solely for the well-being of His creatures, can never create problems for society; the spirit of the Islamic law is to solve - never to create - societal problems. Therefore, any interpretation of a particular verse or hadith which engenders problems for society must be, ipso facto, a devious opinion.
It is my humble prayer and earnest yearn that it may please Allah the Most Gracious the Most Merciful to make this book beneficial to the whole of the Muslim Ummah.
Issah Hassan Tikumah
Department of Education,
Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
Muhrram, 1431 (AH) – January, 2010.
1 THE MODIFIED NIQAB OF TODAY
It is beyond the imagination of any real believer to think that the Sharee’ah (i.e., the Islamic Law) which proceeds from the infallible wisdom of Allah, and which is ordained purposely for the highest well-being of mankind, will ever bring about problems rather than solutions in society. As explained by Shaikh Al-Uthaimin (2004:37-42), far from engendering problems for society, the Sharee’ah would rather repel problems at all costs. As such, anything Islamic that creates problems (rather than solutions) in society must be either falsely attributed to Islam or a deviation from its original form and content as ordained by Islam. The problem of niqab as widely used today is one of such deviant practices. In other words, the nature and form of niqab widely used today is not the same as that obtained during the time of the Prophet (pbuh) and his devout companions. Explanations provided by Ibn Abbas and other learned ones among the Prophet’s companions (See Tafseer At-Tabari Vol 12:45-47) indicate that the type of niqab obtained during the early generations of Islam was not a separate sheet of cloth designed to be a constant or rigid fixture on the face of the woman as obtained today. It was simply the same head-cover that was pulled down to cover a part of the face when the woman feared being fixed with the gaze of a man. The specially designed niqab which provides for fixed and total covering of the woman’s face, including (in some cases) the eyes as it is found today, was a later modification to the practice of niqab, and it was this very modification that brought about the adulteration of the practice of niqab.
As in the case of painting whereby one additional colour can distort the beauty of an artistic design, a slight alteration in a religious practice may appear insignificant but its ramifications are enormous. Indeed, the modification in the nature of niqab has gone a long way to change the role of the niqab from that of beauty hider into that of identity hider instead, to the extent that it has become difficult (if not impossible) to tell whether the person moving in niqab is a woman or a man. The result is that not only that some women now use niqab to hide their identity for evil motives but also, even men now use niqab as a camouflage for various purposes – the latest internationally publicized incident was that of Maulana Abdul-Azeez in Pakistan, who attempted under the cover of niqab to escape from the siege of the Red Mosque in July 2007, but was caught by the security agents. In fact, the evil of niqab as an identity hider, especially here in Nigeria, has reached the extent that it has become a threat even to Islam itself. If the purpose of niqab was to forestall zina (illicit sex), zina is only one (out of many) of the crimes now being facilitated by niqab as an identity hider. It has reached the extent that there are reports of men camouflaging themselves with niqab to visit their former girlfriends (who are now married) inside their husbands’ own homes. It has reached the extent that a girl whose boyfriend is sitting in a shop close to the shop of her own father would go to the boyfriend’s shop in niqab so that her father would not realize that it is his own daughter sitting there with a boy. Even in Saudi Arabia: the common story of people who have lived in Saudi Arabia for long is that Saudi Arabia has become a popular destination for prostitutes from all over the world and niqab as an identity hider is playing a prominent role in concealing these foreign prostitutes from detection by the Saudi authorities - let this be brought to the attention of the Saudi authorities. It has reached the extent that someone would stop a taxi to enter but when he/she sees a person in niqab sitting at the back of the taxi, he/she would turn away from the taxi because there have been reports of armed robbers using such tricks to lure away unsuspecting travelers and rob them. To wit, the evil of niqab as an identity hider, in terms of sowing discord and confusion among Muslims and between Muslims and non-Muslims, and in terms of misrepresenting Islam to the wider world, has reached such magnitudes that if the Prophet (pbuh) were alive today he would simply outlaw that practice as categorically as he outlawed temporary marriage.
One fact that is difficult to challenge is that any practice that hides people’s identity constitutes a security threat in any society. As such, Islam (which is translated to mean ‘peace and security’ for mankind) can never contradict itself by sanctioning any societal practice that is based on identity hiding. The danger of any practice that threatens societal security is certainly greater than its benefit (if it has any benefit at all), and the cardinal principle and method of Islam is to always choose the lesser evil. Allah the Omniscient had perfect knowledge that time shall come when people will be hiding their identity in the name of the Qur’anic verse (33:59) so He Almighty in His Wisdom alluded to the importance of identification at the end of the same verse - (emphasis is mine):
That is most suitable that they will be known and not molested.
2 BLIND COPYING IS NOT SUNNAH
The previous chapter was an extract from my book tilted “The Abuse of Islam and the Dormancy of Islamic Scholars: Evidence from the Misuse of Niqab in the Nigerian Society”, published in the year 2008. Some people reacted to that passage by calling to my attention some traditions that indicate that the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) covered the whole face of his wife (or wives). I will not waste any time or energy trying to question the credibility of their evidence, for that is absolutely uncalled for. Granted that the Prophet (phuh) covered the entire face of his wife, but that cannot justify the practice of identity-hiding niqab.
To begin with, the Prophet (pbuh) himself made it abundantly clear to us that it is not every thing he did that was meant for us to emulate or copy - because our spiritual status and personality are not equal to his. The following hadith, for instance, is a typical illustration of the point at hand:
Narrated Abu Hurairah: Allah’s Messenger (pbuh) forbade continuous fasting (for more than a day without breaking), then a man said: “But you fast continuously, O Messenger of Allah” He (pbuh) replied: “And who among you is like me? For my Lord feeds and waters me while I am asleep during the night”… (Al-Bukhari and Muslim).
In addition, the Prophet (pbuh) issued this general instruction:
And what I have ordered you to do, do it (only) as much as you can… (Al-Bukahri and Muslim).
The point is as simple and clear as this: if the Prophet (pbuh) did something because it was safe for him to do it, we are not to copy it and call it sunnah even if it is not safe for us to do so.
The question, then, is: what is the difference between us and the Prophet (pbuh) on the issue of niqab? More than one. Firstly, just as the spiritual status of the Prophet (pbuh) was above the spiritual statuses of all other men, so were the spiritual statuses of his wives above those of all other women. The Qur’an (Chapter 33:32) is very explicit on this point:
O consorts of the Prophet! You are not like any
of the (other) women…
In the midst of all women, much higher standards were required of the Prophet’s wives at any rate. Two verses earlier in the same Chapter (i.e. 33:30 – 31), Allah the Exalted had promised them double reward for their righteous deeds and double punishment for their sins – this was not, and is not, applicable to other women. Certainly, the Prophet (pbuh) would not have considered it fair to impose the standards of his wives on other women while knowing that the other women will not be given reward equal to that of his wives.
Secondly, the Prophet’s wives were all well-known and revered as mothers of the believers. As such, even though they covered their faces, the critical question of identity hiding did not really arise with their practice. Consider the naïve argument of someone who reacts to our condemnation of identity-hiding niqab by quoting the following hadith:
‘Aisha (the wife of the Prophet) states that she and the Muslim women in her entourage, when accompanying the Prophet (pbuh) on military excursions, used to cover their faces when men travelers passed by them and uncover them when no men were around.(Bashier, 1980:19)
Our response to this quotation is simply this: we thought you would say “a certain woman”, but you mentioned ‘Aisha who was well-known to everybody – remember you are actually talking of a dignitary moving with an entourage! It means, then, that the problem of identity hiding obviously did not arise in that case. But what about the one walking undercover on the streets of Lagos, or in the market of Islamabad, or in the hospital of Cairo or on the university campus in Khartoum – do we really know who that person is? The answer is simply ‘no, we do not’. Then, should that person commit a crime and disappear, how is he/she to be traced up? The answer is ‘no way!’
Thirdly, the Prophets wives were very few – only nine in number. (By the way, I wonder what the niqabists would say to someone who may decide to take nine wives and call that sunnah). In the midst of tens of thousands of women, it would have been extremely unlikely for anyone to impersonate one of only nine individuals who were so unique and distinguished, especially when we consider the fact that such impersonation, if detected, would have attracted extremely severe punishment. In our own case of today, we are talking of a situation whereby anyone is at liberty to cover her face and pretend to be anyone else – going about stealing, kidnapping, raping and spying.
Fourthly, the Prophet’s wives did not roam about freely in the streets, schools, markets, hospitals, and other public avenues. Their movements were highly restricted and regulated by a Qur’anic injunction directly addressed to them:
…And stay quietly in your houses, and make not a dazzling display, like that of the former times of ignorance (Qur’an 33:33).
Under such restricted and regulated movement, it is not reasonable to think that the Prophet’s wives would have posed any threat to public security even though their faces were covered.
An analogy might shed more light on the point at hand. Consider the appearance of a Northern Nigerian chief (or emir) on a ceremonial day. Although the emir’s face is almost totally covered, yet everyone knows who it is, and it will be silly to say that his identity is hidden. By extension, the identities of members of the immediate entourage of the emir are not hidden either. Although members of the entourage are covered like the emir himself, yet they are so well-acquainted with one another that if an outsider should cover himself the same way and mix up with them in impersonation, such an impersonator will be fished out instantly.
In view of all the foregoing, it is obviously far too naive and shortsighted to invoke the practice of the Prophet’s wives to grant latitude to every Tom, Dick and Harry to move about freely undercover with all the terrible security implications for society. The Qur’an (33:21) says:
You have indeed in the Messenger of Allah an excellent exemplar.
As such, the Qur’an did not describe the Prophet (pbuh) as a mere exemplar for the believers; rather, it described him as “an excellent exemplar”. Folly, stupidity, contradiction and harm are all negative attributes inconsistent with the quality of excellence and so the correct practice of the Prophet’s excellent sunnah can never result in any of those negative attributes.
3 NIQAB IS NOT FOR THE GENERAL
PUBLIC
In view of the preceding analyses, one sees a lot of sense in the point of those who trace the origin of niqab to the pre-Islamic Persian Empire. It was the wives of the Emperor who covered their faces by custom - because it was deemed ignoble for commoners to see the faces of the Emperor’s wives. As we shall explain later, some of the pre-Islamic Arab chiefs came to adopt the Persian practice of niqab. Indeed, it is only when the practice of niqab is restricted to a specific group of women (e.g. the wives of a community leader) who are under guarded and regulated movement, as in the case of the wives of the holy Prophet), that it can be considered a safe practice. Otherwise, identity-hiding niqab (as a common practice for the general public) is simply too naïve, ill-conceived, and societally dangerous a practice to be attributed to the infallible Sharee’ah. Imagine that someone has been your close neighbour for the last ten years, during which she has been coming to your wife regularly, walking in-and-out of your house with abundant freedom, and yet you do not know her face. So even when you go out and board a public bus with her inside it, you do not know that you have a neighbour inside the bus, and if you make a mistake of arguing with the bus conductor, this ghost neighbour will go back to your area and whisper to fellow neighbours everything that she witnessed between you and the bus conductor - while you remain unaware of all this. What a dangerous practice is identity-hiding niqab?!
One most crucial question we ought to ask ourselves is why did the Prophet (pbuh) categorically prohibit the use of niqab during hajj (pilgrimage) - the only public gathering in Islam whereof men mingle freely with women? Is it that women’s faces are not attractive to men during hajj? Of course they are! But the fact is that identity hiding in public gatherings has far reaching security implications with possible consequences much greater than what might result from seeing the tempting faces of women. Therefore, the Islamic method being always choose the lesser evil, the Prophet forbade the women from concealing their faces in hajj. The Prophet’s clear prohibition of niqab during hajj is a clear indication that he would not have approved of niqab as a general public practice. Why then should we turn niqab into a license for people who want to go about harassing the general public in their offices, shops and homes? What is the matter with us that we always take the Prophet’s words and actions out of context, as a result of which we create unnecessary difficulties and unwarranted problems for society in the name of the Prophet’s sunnah?
What may be correct to say is that the idea of niqab is there in Islam but the practice itself (i.e. identity hiding) has no place in Islam. The idea is there in Islam in the sense that Islam prohibits looking at a woman’s face with lust. But this does not mean that the woman’s face should be covered. When Islam prohibits something, it does not necessarily say that anything leading to that prohibited thing should be dismantled or eradicated. For two reasons. Firstly, the thing leading to that prohibited act may have other indispensable lawful uses. For example, Islam categorically prohibits the drinking of alcohol. But some of the most important cereals humans feed on are used to brew alcoholic drinks. Does anyone then expect Islam to prohibit the growing of all such cereal crops on the grounds that they could be used to produce alcohol? No! Similarly, Islam prohibits looking at a woman’s face with lust, but it will not ask the woman to cover her face in public because the face is the point of identification and covering it will endanger public security. Once you hide someone’s identity you have given that person the latitude to do and undo anything and everything shameful and shameless – one only needs to go round and interview women, then he would discover the variety of abominations that are committed under the cover of niqab today. Secondly, the existence of evil is all part and parcel of the deliberate comprehensive plan of Allah the Exalted for sorting out the wicked from the righteous. The Qur’an (5:94) itself tells us why temptation exists:
…that Allah may make evident those who fear Him unseen...
To wit, faith is meaningless if there is no temptation to resist. In other words, what Islam wants to say is simply this; “Yes, the woman’s face is beautiful, attractive and tempting, but turn your face away from it if you really have faith” - period! The Prophet (pbuh), as we shall read soon, turned away the eyes of the man who was found looking at the face of a beautiful woman; he (pbuh) did not ask the woman to cover her face so that the man might not see it again. Most of the grave sins we commit on daily basis are associated with the tongue. In his Ihya’, Imam Al-Ghazali listed up to twenty evils associated with the tongue. These include lying, back-biting, cheating and slander, hypocrisy and calumny, etc. In fact, it is hard to think of an evil act, including adultery and shirr’k, in which the tongue has no prominent role to play. And who among those niqabist scholars can boast that he does not use his tongue to commit serious sins? Will anyone of them for that matter agree to have his tongue cut off in order to stop him from committing sins with it? All our sins are committed by our limbs – eyes, hands, legs, etc. Are we for that matter to incapacitate all these limbs as a way out of sins? No! What we are required to do is to exercise self-discipline and self-control over the limbs. Islam is not like communism which posits that there will be no stealing if there is no private property so private ownership of property should be abolished in order to eliminate stealing. What Islam is telling you with its prohibition of stealing is to simply leave people’s property alone as you see it. Similarly, the beauty of the woman’s face is her husband’s private domain and all other men are simply to keep off, and not that she is to cover her face. The Law-maker, the All-knowing Allah who consciously created the beauty of the woman, knew fully well what the beauty of the woman’s face implies for men and yet He the Exalted did not rule that the face should be covered. So why should we use sheer sentiment to shanghai the poor woman into covering her face? Do we know the value of things better than Allah does?
The fact is that sex is one of the most defiant instincts in man. As such any issue that borders on sex has the intrinsic power to make sentiment prevail over reason among men. It is no surprise, therefore, that even some of the most credible scholars of Islam have succumbed to the sentimental support for, and advocacy of, identity-hiding niqab, and yet when we examine the arguments of these scholars we find them absolutely incapable of standing up to the test of critical intellectual inquiry.
4 DIALECTICAL INCOMPETENCIES OF
THE PROTAGONISTS OF NIQAB
The contrary-minded protagonists of niqab are known for creating galaxies of evidence to discredit any hadith which does not support their own sentimental position. But in the course of doing that, they inadvertently convict themselves of contradictions and inconsistencies so glaring as to expose their own disingenuous motives and intellectual deficiencies. Our point would be vindicated by a brief examination of some of their strongest points. Perhaps the most credible authority among the unapologetic advocates of niqab in modern times is Shaikh Muhammad Ibn Salih Al-Uthaimin of Saudi Arabia, may the Mercy of Allah be showered upon him. Let me state in a footnote that it was with great reluctance that I decided to undertake a critique of Shaikh Al-Uthaimin’s discussion on niqab, for I regard Shaikh Al-Uthaimin as one of my most important teachers - although I have never met him personally, I have learnt a lot, and am still learning, from his writings, and Allah knows that I pray for Al-Uthaimin as one of my distant teachers regularly. But I had no choice but to expose the flaws of his argument on niqab in compliance with the command of my Lord, Lord of the worlds:
O you who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be (against) rich or poor: for Allah can best protect both. (Qur’an 4:135).
After undertaking an unintelligible high-tech linguistic manoeuvre aimed at inferring the obligation of niqab from certain Qur’anic verses, Al-Uthaimin went on to present the following implausible analyses (see Risaalatu al Hijab, in Majmoo’atu Arrasaa’il fil Hijab Wa Assufoorr, pp65-94):
Evidence (in Support of Niqab) from Sunnah
First Evidence: The saying of the Prophet (pbuh):
“There is no blame on one of you in looking at a woman (he desires) to court (for marriage), provided the looking is for the purpose of courtship, even though she does not know” (Reported by Ahmad).
This shows that one has no sin in looking at a woman if only his motive is courtship; but if he looks at her for a different purpose, such as lust or enjoyment, then he has committed a sin.
If it is said: the hadith does not specify which part of the woman to be looked at; it could be the chest and the neck. The answer is: Everyone knows that the focus of the courter in examining the beauty of the woman is the face, and all other things are subsidiary.
Dialectical Weaknesses:
Before we go to Al-Uthaimin’s “Second Evidence”, let us look at the flaws of his “First Evidence” quoted above:
a. The hadith is only prohibiting the looking at the
woman’s face (with lustful intention); it is not asking
for the woman’s face to be covered. As we analysed
earlier on, prohibition of looking at the woman’s face is
not the same as ordering the woman to cover her face.
b. The last clause of the hadith (i.e. “even though she does not know”) presupposes that the woman’s face is not covered. For how can you look at a woman’s face without her knowledge if the face is covered? Is she going to be asleep, or dead, or unconscious for whatever reason? I remember asking one of the niqabists this very question and his unbelievably shocking response was: “It is possible! For instance, when she is in the bathroom…” I simply lost my temper at his profane statement, and I retorted to him: “Glory be to Allah! You’re just confirming my suspicion that some of you these niqabists of today are internal enemies seeking to tarnish the image of Islam and defile the Muslim community with your niqab. Otherwise, how could a true believer possibly imagine that Islam would permit a man to approach the wicked immorality of peeping at an innocent naked woman inside the bathroom?!...” One escape-route for the niqabists is to assert that the clause “even though she does not know” means that she does not know that the man’s aim in looking at her is courtship. But, unfortunately for the niqabist, the porosity of this assertion is very obvious, for it implies gross underestimation of the integrity of women. In a society whereby face-covering is the norm, it would be simply too fanciful to think that a woman or a girl (except an infant) will be called to expose her face before a strange man and she will not perceive that love is at work – by the time a girl could reach the age of courtship she must have been fully initiated and orientated to that effect by older women in the house or the community.
The obvious truth is that the very hadith the protagonists of niqab are trying to use to consolidate their unviable position is only providing further exposition on the futility of their position. The sentimental assertion that “everyone knows that the focus of the courter… is the face” is simply too unscientific and rather arbitrary. It is true that the beauty of the face is paramount. But a necessary condition is not the same as a sufficient condition. In other words, it is a wishful exaggeration to claim that if a woman’s face is beautiful then nothing else in her features is of great significance to the man. In the discipline of Philosophy, issues of beauty fall under the department of Aesthetics – a department torn between objectivist, subjectivist and emotivist theories. I personally know of men who would not entertain any woman who is short (in height) no matter how beautiful her face may be. Others frown on any woman with “K-legs” irrespective of the beauty of her face. Those of us who live in open societies (where the overwhelming majority of women do not cover their faces) know that it is not uncommon to see a man leave his (facially) very beautiful wife at home and be flirting about with an ugly prostitute. Just what is so appealing to him in this ugly woman? Only he himself can tell. The point is that perception of the beauty of the woman is too subjective and irrational a field for anyone to simply assert unilaterally that “everyone knows that… it is the face”. Perhaps this explains why our all-wise Prophet (pbuh) did not specifically mention any particular part of the woman in that hadith but left it open.
Now, Al-Uthaimin again:
Second Evidence: The Prophet (pbuh) said: “Whoever trails his clothes out of pride, Allah shall not look at him on the Day of Resurrection”. Ummu Salmah asked: “Then, what should women do with their trains?” the Prophet (pbuh) replied “let them lower it by a span” She said: “Their feet will be exposed then” He (pbuh) responded: “Then let them lower it by an arm and not more than that”. In this hadith there is evidence of obligation of covering the woman’s feet… and since the feet are less tempting than the face, it is inconsistent with the wisdom and rationale of the Sharee’ah to sanction the covering of the less tempting and allow the exposure of the more tempting – this will amount to a contradiction, which is impossible in the wisdom of Allah and His Sharee’ah”.
Dialectical Weakness
In reaction to Al-Uthaimin’s “second evidence” we say: There is simply nothing contradictory in sanctioning the covering of the feet but not the face. The law of Islam is not a law of sentiment – it is a law of reason and wisdom. In the words of Al-Qaradawi:
There is a consensus of opinion that all the rulings of the Sharee’ah are goal-oriented, that behind the text of each ruling there is an objective that the Sharee’ah seeks to achieve, for one of the attributes of Allah is “the Wise’, which has been repeated in the Qur’an over ninety times. It is well known that Allah does not legislate out of folly, or arbitrarily, just as He does not create anything in vain. Far above all this is He. (Bello, 2003: 44).
The fact is that the problems generated by the covering of the face do not arise with the covering of the feet at all. In other words, whereas the covering of the feet does not create any problem for society, the covering of the face actually engenders identity crises in society, with all the incalculable security implications thereby. It is true that the face is more tempting than the feet. But is it the wisdom of the Sharee’ah that where the greater problem cannot be solved then the lesser problem should be left intact, so that if the more tempting face cannot be covered then the less tempting feet should be left open too? In other words, should there be no efforts to minimize evil simply because evil cannot be eradicated? Moreover, the beautification of the face is a daily task and the cosmetics applied to the face can easily be washed or rubbed off anytime the woman wants to go outside the house. The feet, on the other hand, have some relatively lasting decorations, such as the dye which may last several days or even weeks and cannot be easily washed off the feet when the woman wants to go outside the house. That is why some authorities have ruled that the obligation to cover the feet does not arise unless there is artificial beautification (such as the dye) on them.
The pertinent question is, just where lies that contradiction Al-Uthaimin is talking about?! The actual contradiction is to negate Islam’s fundamental purpose of fostering peace and security in society by sanctioning in the name of the same Islam the dubious practice of identity hiding which is intrinsically inimical to societal security.
5 AL-UTHAIMINS’ UNTENABLE
REJECTION OF THE CONDEMNATION OF COMPULSORY NIQAB
In his thesis being reviewed here, Shaikh Al-Uthaimin wrote:
The Proofs of those who Permit Opening the Face
I am not aware of any proof from the Qur’an and Sunnah advanced by those who permit looking at the woman’s face, apart from the following:
One: The saying of the Exalted (Allah): <
Two: What is reported by Al-Bukhari, from Ibn Abbas who said that his brother Al-Fadl was riding behind the Prophet (pbuh) on his she-camel during the Farewell Pilgrimage when a certain woman from Khath’am came to ask the Prophet some questions. Al-Fadl and the woman started looking at each other, whereupon the Prophet turned Al-Fadl’s face to another direction. This indicates that the woman’s face was not covered.
Three: What is reported by Abu Dawud… from Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her) that [her sister] Asma’ Bint Abubakar entered into the presence of the Prophet (pbuh) wearing thin clothes. The Prophet (pbuh) turned away from her and said: “O Asma’! When a woman reaches maturity it is not right that any part of her should be seen (by alien men) except this and this”, and he pointed to his face and hands.
Four: What is reported by Al-Bukhari, from the hadith of Jabir Ibn Abdullahi, that once after leading people in eid prayer the Prophet (pbuh) preached … to the women…. A woman with black cheeks rose up… if her face had been covered it would not have been known that her cheeks were black.
That is all I know of the proofs provided by those who permit the woman to expose her face.
Reaction to these Proofs
1. Concerning the tafseer of Ibn Abbass, there are three ways of looking at it:
i. It is possible* that his interpretation preceded the verse of hijab.
ii. It is possible* that he was referring to such adornments as are not to be exposed… and these two (probabilities i.e. i and ii) are amplified by his interpretation of the saying of the Exalted: “O Prophet! Say to your wives…”
* Underline is my own emphasis iii. In case we are not convinced of either of these two possibilities, his interpretation (exempting the face from cover) cannot be taken as a binding authority unless there is no other interpretation of another companion (of the Prophet) opposing his interpretation. If another companion opposes him, then the better of the two (opposing interpretations) will be selected… And the interpretation of Ibn Abbass has been opposed by Ibn Mas’ud who interpreted the saying of the Exalted “except that which [necessarily] appears” to mean “the robe, the garments, and that which must be exposed…”
2. The hadith of Aisha is weak for two reasons…
3. Concerning the hadith of Ibn Abbass, there is nothing in it indicating permissibility of looking at a woman’s face; because the Prophet, (pbuh) did not leave Al-Fadl (to continue looking at the woman) – he turned Al-Fadl’s face to another direction.
…if it is asked: Why did the Prophet (pbuh) not instruct the woman to cover her face? The answer: What is obvious* is that the woman was in ihram (in the course of hajj)… or it could be said: Maybe* the Prophet instructed her (to cover her face) later. The fact that such an instruction was not reported does not mean that it was not issued*, for lack of report of (occurrence) of an incident does not rule out the occurrence of the incident..
* Underline is my own emphasis 4. With regard to the hadith of Jabir, it is not mentioned when that occurred. It may be* that the woman was one of the post-menstrual elderly ones who are allowed to expose their faces… or it may be* that it occurred before the revelation of the verse enjoining hijab.
More Dialectical Weaknesses
Dear reader, that was the fully-fledged argument of Al-Uthaimin against the opponents of compulsory niqab. Fortunately enough, the flaws of his argument are so obvious and conspicuous that I doubt if the reader is actually in need of my exposition on that. Nevertheless, for the sake of those who may still have some doubts, let us have some close examination of Al-Uthaimin’s objections. We shall review his argument in the order it was presented (i.e. 1, 2, 3 and 4).
But before that, it is fundamental to point out that while his referral to those who oppose compulsory niqab as “those who permit looking at the woman’s face” may not be construed as a calculated attempt to lure the simple-minded among his readers towards a preferred conclusion, it is nonetheless misleading. As we already explained earlier on, saying that the woman’s face is not to be covered is not the same as saying that men are free to look at women’s faces. Now, a review of his main points of argument:
* Underline is my own emphasis 1. His first two points of analysis of Ibn Abbass’s interpretation are predicated on possibility (i.e. “It is possible that…”, and possibility is a mere probability – governed by the law of chance; there is no fact or certainty in it at all. In the context of legality, an argument that is based on probability can only worth little attention or not at all.
Concerning his third point of analysis (i.e. iii of 1) of Ibn Abbass’s interpretation, I humbly submit that there is simply no contradiction between the interpretation of Ibn Abbass and that of Ibn Mas’ud. Ibn Abbass stated that the exception in the verse refers to “the face, the hands and the ring” while Ibn Mas’ud stated that the exception refers to “the robe, the garment and that which must be exposed”. The two sets are not opposites. In other words, none of the elements in the set of Ibn Abbas is the opposite of another element in the set of Ibn Mas’ud. In a simpler expression, ‘the face’ (as mentioned by Ibn Abbas) is not the opposite of ‘the robe’ (mentioned by Ibn Mas’ud); neither are ‘the hands’ the opposite of the garment nor is ‘the ring’ the opposite of ‘that which must be exposed’. Only opposites may not co-exists: for instance, fire and water may not co-exist in the same bowl. So where lies the contradiction between the two interpretations so that a choice between them may be warranted? On the contrary, the general phrase ‘and that which must be exposed’ of Ibn Mas’ud’s interpretation may as well embrace all the other things listed by Ibn Abbass (i.e. the face, the hands and the ring). It is important also to explain that Ibn Abbass’s alleged demonstration with regard to Qur’an 33:59 (whereby he is reported to have pulled down his headscarf to cover part of his face (and explained that the woman should cover her face leaving one eye open) is not inconsistent with his interpretation of the Qur’anic phrase “except that which [necessarily] appears thereof” (in Qur’an 24:31) to exempt the face from cover. There are many verses in the Qur’an which appear to contradict each other (such as one verse calling for war and another one preaching peace) but are not really contradictory at all – each one is simply to be applied in its own right. As such, what is to be made out of the two interpretations of Ibn Abbass is that, generally the woman is not to cover her face, but where it becomes necessary for her to conceal the beauty of her face from men without causing any trouble (such as endangering public security with identity hiding or fostering false testimony), then, she can pull down her headscarf at that particular moment to cover part of her face – but not to cover the face constantly and be moving about undercover. One important question remains to be asked. Let us assume that the two interpretations are really contradicting, but why should the niqabist select that of Ibn Mas’ud instead of that of Ibn Abbass? The answer is simply that the interpretation of Ibn Mas’ud is obviously convenient to the campaign for compulsory niqab.
Let it be noted that all the explanation I am giving here with regard to Ibn Abbass’ reported explanation and demonstration on the verse (Qur’an 33:59) becomes necessary only if the authenticity of that report has been established. However, the truth of the matter as clearly exposed by Imam Albani (1412AH, p88) is that the report of that demonstration and the accompanying explanation that the woman is to cover her face leaving one eye open, has not been traced up to Ibn Abbass; it is a wild story falsely attributed to Ibn Abbass. Indeed, the most unbelievable revelation Imam Albani has made about the pro-niqab scholars is the conspicuous evidences he has provided on how they deliberately employ weak and fabricated hadiths to assert their position while knowing fully well that such hadiths are not genuine. Furthermore, we have to point out that the claim that Ibn Mas’ud interpreted the Qur’anic phrase “except that which [necessarily] appears thereof” to mean “the outer-garment” is completely irrational. For the fact is that it is naturally impossible to hide outer-garments: the only way to hide an outer-garment is to wear another garment over it so that the second garment worn will then become the outer-garment; in other words, even if one puts on one thousand pieces of clothes, one over another, the one thousandth piece will be an outer-garment. Then we have to ask, does it make sense to prohibit someone from doing something he naturally has no capacity to do – for example, to prohibit a blind man from watching a television? The answer is ‘No’. Then, since there is no frivolity in the word of Allah, it is inappropriate to think that the exemption in Allah’s command for the woman to conceal her adornment is referring to the outer-garment which is already naturally impossible to conceal.
Before discussing the second point of Al-Uthaimin I feel it is necessary to digress for a brief look at Imam Albani’s biography as we shall be referring to him frequently from this point. The following passage quoted from my book titled “The Abuse of Islam…”(2008:15) should serve the purpose:
The latest most credible work on the non-compulsory status of niqab was that of Shaikh Muhammad Nasiruddin Al Albani of Syria. Shaikh Albani is the most renowned authority of Hadith in recent history of Islam – it is a common phenomenon these days to see young Islamic scholars (including those of Nigeria) nicknaming themselves Albani in show of love and respect for Shaikh Albani. Shaikh Albani published over one hundred volumes before his death in the year 2000. His volumes were devoted to tracing every Islamic practice to its original source, form and content, through strict application of the Methodology of Hadith. In the last couple of decades virtually all major Islamic textbooks have been revised (and some are still being revised) to reflect the findings of Albani. Albani’s works initially earned him the love and respect of Saudi Authorities who employed him as a teacher and researcher in the Islamic University in Madina. However, Albani later fell out with his Saudi employers when his findings stated that there was no basis in Islamic traditions for making niqab a compulsory practice. The book he published on the subject, Jilbabul Mar’atil Muslimah Filkitabi Wassunnah, still remains a banned book in Saudi Arabia where niqab is compulsory for all women.
Now, the second point of Al-Uthaimin:
2. Yes, the hadith of Aisha is weak. But that neither adds strength to the point for niqab nor detract from the argument against niqab since there are other authentic texts (such as Ibn Abbass’ tafseer which exempts the woman’s face and hands from cover) with the same meaning as the text of Aisha’s hadith. Imam Albani (pp60-72) has provided thirteen separate authentic texts in support of the fact that the woman is not under any obligation to cover her face.
3. The problem of his third argument, which is predicted on ‘maybe’, is similar to that of his first argument. The simple dialectical truth is that anything that ‘may be’, ‘may be not’ also. His third argument is rather surprisingly crude and characterized by unbelievable degree of parochialism. If we say that lack of evidence of an instruction from the Prophet (pbuh) on a particular issue does not mean that the Prophet did not issue such instruction, then anyone else can equally say or do anything and contend that the lack of evidence of the Prophet (pbuh) saying or doing such a thing does not really mean that the Prophet (pbuh) did not say or do it. And how could the protagonists of niqab eat their own words by having recourse to what is obvious in the text - that ‘what is obvious in the text is that the woman was in ihram’?! Of all the parts of the human body, the most unnatural to cover is the face. Therefore, if the Qur’an instructs the woman to cover her entire body ‘except that which [necessarily] appears thereof’, the first thing that will naturally come to mind (as the exception) is the face. Yet, in spite of all that, the protagonists of niqab conveniently rejected what is obvious in the text of the verse and instead went about digging up mountains in search of the implied – the opposite of the obvious – in their desperate attempt to oblige the poor woman to cover her face. But when at a point they found themselves in a tight corner they turned around to seek refuge in textual obviousness.
4. Like the first and third ones, the fourth argument, as you can see, is also suffering from the syndrome of ‘may be’ – it is predicated on two ‘maybes’. Since the foundation of his point is feeble, whatever might be built upon it is bound to be shaky. Please note firmly that Imam Albani (p74) has provided clear facts with appropriate dates to debunk the assumption that these incidents of women exposing their faces during the time of the Prophet may have occurred before the revelation of the verse of hijab; the truth is that they all happened after the revelation of the verse of hijab, which means that the interpretation of the verse of hijab to mean that the woman is to cover her face is a total fallacy.
In the final analysis, the obvious conclusion to be drawn from Shaikh Al-Uthaimin’s presentation is that he has not succeeded in putting forward any sound point against the condemnation of compulsory niqab. In fact, the more he tried to discredit the condemnation of compulsory niqab, the more he exposed the futility of the argument for compulsory niqab.
6 PLAIN CONTRADICTIONS
In spite of the fact that the foregoing analyses are strong enough to put the niqabists to rout, in order that we may drive the final nail into the coffin of compulsory niqab, let us examine the argument of another prominent advocate of niqab. The book of the renowned Sudanese professor, Zakaria Bashier, titled “Muslim Women in the Midst of Change” (1980), is another acclaimed thesis in support of compulsory niqab. Professor Bashier categorized the views on niqab into ‘Traditionalist’ and ‘Moderate’ trends, the Traditionalists being those who advocate compulsory niqab. In a foreword to Bashier’s book, M.M. Ahsan of the Islamic Foundation in Leicester, the publisher of Bashier’s book, submitted the following:
Dr Zakaria Bashier, in this short paper, has made a successful attempt to summarize the viewpoints of different scholars and vindicate the ‘Traditional viewpoint’ based on the strict interpretation of the Qur’an and Sunnah…
In the next few pages, we shall examine the core of Bashier’s argument in order to find out whether he has actually vindicated the so-called ‘Traditionalist viewpoint’ or he has merely asserted it. But before we consider any of his arguments, it is well to have a clear understanding of who are the so-called ‘Traditionalists’. In our own case, the person who can give us the best description of the so-called ‘Traditionalists’ is Professor Bashier himself, and he wrote as follows (p10):
Expressed in an extreme form, this traditional view believes that the woman should be lodged safely at home, never venturing outside except when there is an obvious necessity for her to do so. Thus the woman is a prisoner in her own home. She has no public or social role to play outside the domain of her own house and beyond her role as a housewife and a mother. This view is based upon the conception of the woman as a total ‘awrah (an object of concealment). Even her voice, her countenance and the sounds she makes are all ‘awrah. She is viewed as a weak creature, easily susceptible to infatuation and seduction.
From this description by Bashier, it is crystal clear even to the dumb and deaf that the so-called Traditionalists’s view of the woman is charged with extreme emotion of male chauvinism as well as passion of uncontrollable amorosity. This sinister perception of the woman (as depicted above) is too insultive to the personality of the woman to be described as Islamic. To put it rather candidly, it is simply the typical Jahiliyyah (pre-Islamic era) malignant view of the woman which has been recycled with the new colours of Islam. In view of their insolent view of the woman as depicted by Bashier, it is apt to say that, from Islamic point of view, the so-called Traditionalist are not even qualified to express any opinion on any matter affecting women at all!. To wit, the Islamic legal principle which bars a judge from presiding (in judgment) over a case if he is believed to have any bias or prejudice or any other ulterior motive thereof, is the same principle which disqualifies the so-called Traditionalists from making any judgment on matters pertaining to women.
In view of all that, it is well-safe to conclude that Bashier’s own description of the so-called Traditionalists is prima facie evidence that these so-called Traditionalists have no point to make about women for a start. In that case, just wherefrom will the supposed ‘vindication’ of the so-called Traditionalists come?! The answer is obviously ‘Nowhere!’
Notwithstanding the obvious truth that Bashier’s argument is already dead, in order to give his dead argument a clean burial, we shall go ahead to evaluate some of his salient points on the issue of compulsory niqab as ordained by his Traditionalists. In their manoeuvring to infer compulsory niqab from Qur’an 33:59 the so-called Traditionalists have been quoted by Bashier as arguing (p18):
That it is perfectly general in its scope and intent and says so explicitly. There is, thus no question that it may not apply to Muslim women generally.
Unfortunately, in his attempt to buttress the point of his Traditionalists, Bashier went on to assert (p19), quite contradictorily, that
Not only did the wives of the Prophet comply with this practice, but also the vast majority of the Muslim women.
To begin with, there is simply no credible evidence anywhere that the women who did it constituted ‘the vast majority’ – they might as well be a small minority. Nevertheless, just for the sake of sheer argument only, we shall agree with Bashier that the women who did it were ‘the vast majority’. However, the vast majority of a population simply does not mean the all and sundry of that population. As such, if the ‘vast majority’ of Muslim women wore niqab in the time of the Prophet (pbuh), it still means that the minority of them did not wear it – which is clear evidence that it was not compulsory for all Muslim women in the days of the Prophet (pbuh). And that being the case, we have to ask, if ‘tradition’ means a practice left behind by the Prophet, then, on what basis have the so-called Traditionalist established niqab as a compulsory practice for all women when it was not so in the time of the Prophet? The answer can be nothing other than ‘on the basis of sheer sentiment and conjecture’.
One more contradiction from Bashier (p 30):
The case of the woman who demanded and obtained an explanation as to why most women go to hell is also dismissed by the traditionalists. They seize upon the descriptive phrase that the woman’s cheeks were off-colour somewhat and appeared darker than the rest of her face. They interpret this as an allusion to the woman’s lack of beauty, and as such, there was no reason for her to be veiled. This also seems, to me at any rate, to be a valid point.
If there is anything that is unambiguously clear from the point of Bashier’s Traditionalists as quoted above, that is to say that only beautiful women were required to wear niqab in the time of the Prophet and not the generality of women. This clearly invalidates the position of the so-called Traditionalists that niqab is compulsory for all women. Where then lies that ‘validity’ Bashier is asserting?
Dear reader, such were the plain contradictions conveniently crowned as “vindication”. In the final analysis, therefore, the value of Bashier’s book (i.e. “Muslim Women in the Midst of Change”) may be its abysmal failure to discredit the condemnation of compulsory niqab as well as its crude exposure of the porosity of the so-called Traditionalist viewpoint on niqab.
One simple truth is that niqab is a highly unpopular idea among the generality of Muslim women today; the vast majority of contemporary Muslim women, including the zealous ones who are actively engaged in Islamic evangelism, hate to hear the suggestion that they should cover their faces. Except in those Gulf countries (Saudi Arabia, to be specific) where niqab is forced on the generality of women, only a small minority of Muslim women do it voluntarily in other countries, and that small minority include both those who may be having good intentions as well as the unknown proportion who do it with various sorts of dubious motives. The simple logical deduction to make here is that, unpopular as niqab is among Muslim women today, if it had been a compulsory practice for all women during the time of the Prophet (pbuh), there would certainly have been incidents of violations and corresponding appropriate punishments. Yet there is simply no single authentic textual evidence anywhere of the Prophet or any of his Companions punishing or even admonishing or cautioning violators of the practice. I do not think the niqabists will have any shame saying that the lack of reports on such violations does not mean that the violations and corresponding punishments did not occur. But if the Companions who reported every bit of the Prophet’s words and actions, including his answering of the call of nature, deliberately failed to report incidents of violations of niqab, then, that shows how insignificant they viewed the practice and so it should not even worth any serious bit of contention among us today.
Dear reader, after all that has been said above, I believe you can now separate the wheat from the chaff by yourself. It must be absolutely clear to you by now that the thesis of the niqabists is all nothing but gibberish, a bundle of plain contradictions and inconsistencies - of course, contradictions and inconsistencies are the natural features of every philosophy which stems from sentiment and emotion rather than reason and fact. Yet, in the face of the abundant evidence that Islam does not require the woman to cover her face, the so-called Traditionalists have taken the law into their own hands by commanding the woman to wear niqab, in the words of Bashier (p 17), “as a matter of religious obligation (fard), the omission of which is a punishable offence”. Al-Qardawi has quoted one of the niqabists as saying that “if a woman exposes her face, this is akin to exposing her pudenda” (Bello, 2003:94).
Should any so-called Islamic scholars insist on forcing the poor woman to cover her face in spite of the fact that it is now abundantly clear that Allah Almighty has not ordained that, then the only remaining question Imam Albani advised us to ask them is:
Or have they partners (i.e., other deities) who have ordained for them some religion without the permission of Allah? (Qur’an 42:21)
Imam Albani (p11) has offered one particular reason as to why the niqabists would never change their position in the face of the total collapse of their argument: Mukaabaratun wa lahaa qarrnaani baarizaani, meaning, “a pride with two protruding horns”. And I have discovered a second reason: vested interests. Niqab is now being used as a cover to commit such serious crimes that one cannot rule out the possibility that some – I did not say all - of these unapologetic advocates of niqab actually use niqab for some undercover activities. The case of that Pakistani cleric, Maulaana Abdul Azeez, who used niqab to disguise himself as a woman, at the siege of the Red Mosque in Pakistan in July 2007, should serve as an eye-opener to us on this issue.
7 ISLAM’S FRIENDS OR ITS ENEMIES?
On a closer look, one is tempted to suspect the faith of some – I did not say all – of these niqabists. Imam Al-Ghazali told us in his Ihyaa’ that one of the characteristics of “the Scholar of the Hereafter” is that he is rather hesitant or reluctant to answer questions because he always thinks of how to explain to Allah on the Day of Judgment as to wherefrom he got a particular answer to a particular question. Yet we find some of these niqabists recklessly making extremely great pronouncements, sentencing people to hell on the basis of highly questionable and unfounded deductions and inductions. Have they forgotten the fact that one of the greatest sins in the Islamic faith is to prohibit what Allah has not prohibited or permit what Allah has prohibited – (for this amounts to equating oneself to Allah in authority)?
Following the publication of my book on the “Misuse of Niqab in the Nigerian Society” in 2008, a certain very ignorant niqabist went on a spree of slander against me. He went round spreading about me the most heinous allegations, including the claim that I was on the pay-roll of some anti-Islamic Western agents – all without providing any proof or evidence. You will not believe that this wicked slanderer whose sinful allegations showed no iota of fear of Allah, anywhere he stood up, would conclude his slander by calling on me to fear Allah and stop making mockery of niqab. At a point, one of my students who was a neighbour to this scandal-monger, mobilized friends to storm his house whereupon they charged him as follows: “… What is well-known about you in the whole of this area is that you never pay your debts; if you manage to buy anything on credit, that is the end of the story. You collect big sums of money from parents supposedly to help their children get admission into one school or another but in the end they get neither admission nor refund of their money…” Later when I heard the story of this encounter, my reaction was this: “If I were a swindler, I would definitely advocate niqab so that I might hide under it to swerve my victims” Then I added: “I remember Shaikh Al-Qaradawi stating somewhere that his personal experience showed that some of those religionists who take the most hardlined positions on secondary and controversial issues like niqab tend to have the most reckless attitudes towards the primary and undisputed values of Islam, that is, honesty, respect for the rights of others, etc. If Al-Qaradawi’s remark was a mere imagination to me, the wicked behaviour of this slanderer has now given me a practical illustration of Al-Qaradawi’s words”. The full point of Al-Qaradawi might be quoted here (Bello, 2003:134 – 135):
…We are stunned by the way some religionists, in general, and those involved in da’awah work, in particular, how they concentrate on external deeds and etiquettes more than they do on the internal deeds of the heart, and more on form rather than on substance. Examples of these are (the obsession with) making shirtsleeves wrist-long and trousers short of the ankle, trimming the moustache and letting the beard grow. Other examples are the design of the hijab… These issues, no matter how much we may rate them, cannot take the position of priority in the religion.
I have observed, with dismay, that many - I did not say all - of those who are punctilious over these and similar external issues ignore their punctiliousness, and do not expend any effort, when it comes to issues of greater importance and having more profound effect. I mean issues like goodness to parents, maintaining the ties of kinship, respecting the rights of others, doing quality work or rendering quality service, giving every person their due right, and compassion to the creatures of Allah…
The statement made in America by Brother Dr Hassan Hat’hoot, a successful da’iya, has impressed me. He was raising objection on the conduct of some overzealous brothers. They were making life difficult for themselves and for others over issues like halaal meat… Yet these overzealous Muslims would not care to eat the flesh of their dead brothers [i.e. backbiting them] a number of times a day. They may even hunt for suspicions, trump up charges against their brothers, or, if they themselves were not the source of those trumped up charges, believe in them and publish them whenever someone else concocts them.
Indeed, I was told of someone who would never compromise the strict use of niqab but who saw nothing wrong releasing his animals to go about eating the crops of his neighbours.
It is a paradox to enter a Muslim community and see the Muslims divided into hostile factions on the grounds that one group is that of innovators and had to be fought by the other group which adheres to Sunnah. But when you observe some of the things being done in the name of Sunnah you discover that the so-called Sunnis are even worse than the people they are fighting as innovators. This reminds me. One day I was in my office when one of the niqabists came. This was at a time when Muslims in Nigeria were boycotting Dennish products in reaction to Dennish satirical cartoons of the holy Prophet (pbuh). Dano Milk was the most well-known of all the Dennish products being boycotted in Nigeria. In the presence of the niqabist I called someone and asked him to buy me milk. I deliberately mentioned Dano Milk because I believed the niqabist sitting there with me would talk – and he really did. The niqabist, who looked visibly surprised, asked me “You didn’t hear the announcement that Muslims should stop buying Dano Milk?!” Then I retorted: “The cover you have provided for criminals to go about stealing, fornicating, spying and impersonating in the name of the Prophet’s Sunnah is far more insultive to the Prophet than Dennish cartoons. So if I didn’t boycott you when you came into my office, why should I boycott Dennish products?”.
As Sayyid Maududi rightly noted (Murad, 1985:62), “The cruel jokes, brothers, which we Muslims play with the Holy Book of Allah” today make it simply unjustifiable for us to complain when non-Muslims insult that Holy Book. The kind of stupid and irresponsible things we so-called Muslims do today in the name of Sunnah of the Prophet only legitimize the cause of those who seek to attack and insult the Prophet. Consider, for instance, the kind of malignant view Professor Bashier reported the so-called Traditionalists to be holding about women. And yet he ended up claiming that, incomprehensible though their argument is, they are vindicated. What kind of image do you think you are portraying of Islam, and for that matter the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), if you come out and tell the world that people who hold such wicked views about the woman are vindicated on Islamic grounds? How do you think your emotions would react to such an aversive characterization of women if you were a woman yourself? Yes, this is how we prepare grounds for enemies of Islam to exploit and mislead our women; that is how we demolish Islam with our fanatical views while thinking we are building it. Indeed, the foremost tabi’i (i.e. a companion to the companions of the Prophet), Al-Hassan Al-Basri, minced no words when he warned that “religion will be lost as a result of the practices of both the excessive and the negligent” (Al-Qaradawi; 1991:154). The point is that the excessive (or extremist) tends to discourage people about religion by making things too rigid and difficult while the negligent renders religion meaningless by making it too loose and permissive. Neither of the two extreme ends of anything is praiseworthy.
I remember reading a fatwa (religious verdict) by a Saudi cleric. It was complained to him that the appearance of the niqab had been observed to be quite frightening and intimidating to people abroad and so it could be a discouraging factor to non-Muslims who might wish to embrace Islam. The crude reaction of the Saudi cleric was that ‘since the Sharee’ah has ordained it, anyone who complains that it is frightening or intimidating has to be ignored’. This is a most outrageous pronouncement. The Prophet (pbuh) would never have allowed a secondary matter like niqab (even if it were a creditable practice) to obstruct the very primary and most fundamental issue of Laa ilaaha illaa Allah. Can we imagine any sensible person who would establish a business venture for making money, and when his employees complain to him that because his dog is always lying at the entrance, customers are afraid to come in, then he says to the employees: “Just leave the dog to continue lying there - ignore the customers!”? No single practice of Islam ever mattered more to the Prophet (pbuh) than Islam as a whole. Even salat (prayer, which is the most noble act in the Islamic faith) the Prophet (pbuh) severely reprimanded any of his companions who was reported to be discouraging people by over-prolonging prayers as an Imam – the hadith of Mu’adh is well-known to every average Muslim. The hadith of Abu Musa and Mu’adh is also well-known to all of us, whereof the Prophet (pbuh) instructed the Companions (he dispatched to go out and call people to Islam) thus: “Make things easy (for people) and not make things difficult, (encourage people by) giving glad tidings and not put people off”. Yes, people who grew up and read Islam under the fully lavish sponsorship of their government can easily pronounce that would-be Muslims should be ignored – because they have never suffered a pinch in the cause of Islam, they have not invested any painful sacrifice into Islam, so they have nothing to lose if others stay away from Islam. The Prophet (pbuh) and his devout Companions (may Allah be pleased with them) who suffered dearly to establish Islam could not have afforded to ignore any would-be Muslim who expressed genuine fears over a particular Islamic practice. The Prophet (pbuh) would sometimes refrain from taking a particular line of action – even though he knew it was right – because of fear that it might be misunderstood by outsiders and thereby tarnish the image of Islam. When, for instance, Umar Ibn Al-Khattab sought his permission to kill the hypocrites in Madinah, the Prophet (pbuh) declined, saying: “Lest people (out there) say that Muhammad is killing his companions” (Al-Tajreed Al-Sareeh, p316). In today’s West where people know virtually nothing (positive) about Islam, are so much afraid of Islam and are so hyper-sensitive on the issue of women’s rights, the Prophet (pbuh) would have been too wise to allow a practice like niqab to be taken there even if it were a credible practice for all Muslim women. Imam Albani made a point similar to this one. But he did not even take the case as far as the West. Albani (p32) wondered why some religionists in some Arab countries, such as Egypt and Syria, should be preoccupied with niqab for their women when these women are not even willing to properly cover their heads and necks yet – why seeking to compel these women to do what Allah has not ordained on them when they have not yet observed what Allah has ordained on them?! It is in their same spirit of indifference to would-be Muslims that these niqabists, although their sybaritic lifestyle is such that they cannot handle any sword, yet they have made the sword their national flag, brandishing it together with the motto of Islam (i.e. Laa ilaaha illaa Allah) before the eyes of the whole world, thereby justifying the malicious propaganda by Islam’s enemies that Islam is a violent religion which was spread by the sword. The Prophet (pbuh) would have been simply too wise and too sensitive to adopt the sword as his symbol in the midst of nations of the world.
One most serious injustice Professor Bashier committed in his aforementioned book was his somewhat misleading characterization of the opposing camps of scholars on the issue of niqab. He stated (pp17–20):
The Traditional Position on the Veiling of Woman
… This view is widespread in countries lucky enough to escape Western domination in the form of colonialism, e.g. Saudi Arabia and some of the Gulf States.
The Moderate Trend on Veiling
The main exponents of the Moderate Trend on the veiling of Muslim women are such men as Sayyid Muhammad Nasir Al-Din Al-Albani (Syria), Sayyid Al-Bahi Al-Khuli (Egypt), Sayyid Qutb and Muhammad Qutb (Egypt), Al-Ghazali (Egypt), and Dr Mustafa Al-Siba’i (Syria).
Apparently, the misleading impression Bashier hoped to stamp with this characterization is that it is the influence of Western colonization which created the “Moderate Trend” of anti-compulsory niqab. But the truth is that the opposition to compulsory niqab is as old as the advocacy for compulsory niqab – centuries before the advent of colonization. Yes, one reality that must be accepted is that those Muslim countries which suffered colonial subjugation, their struggle against colonization did not only eventually give them international exposure with its attendant broad-mindedness but also, it ignited their spirit of resistance against their own domestic political repression – including oppression done under the guise of religious doctrine. That is why you find political opposition in those countries whereas those Gulf peoples who did not suffer colonization remain passive loyals of their absolute monarchies. Indeed, the exponents of anti-compulsory niqab listed by Bashier are the crop of scholars who stood up to their autocratic governments and were either locked up or chased into exile and some of them were even killed in the process. That is in sharp contrast to the Gulf scholars (that is, the advocates of niqab) who are reputed for their submissive muteness before their autocratic rulers. At this juncture, we have to ask, which of these two categories of scholars are really pious and should be trusted on matters of faith: is it those who fear none other than Allah and lose their freedoms or lives in speaking out against unjust rulers or is it those who fumble wimpishly in the corridors of power? Clearly, it is the former category. As Yusuf Ali rightly stated in his Commentary on the Holy Qur’an (Note 1267), ‘it is only worldly greed and ambition which produces fear of worldly power’. Fearful as these Gulf scholars are of their absolute rulers, one cannot doubt that if anyone of them were asked to guard the entrance to the palace of his autocratic ruler, and threatened with death penalty in case of any security breach, then he would treat every niqab wearer as a prime suspect.
One only has to read the writings of Imam Albani to see how vividly he has exposed these niqabist scholars – their ignorance as well as their dishonesty and fraud in terms twisting facts and misrepresenting historical episodes in favour of their fallacious views. For instance, in Albani’s book, the first edition of which was published in 1370 AH (i.e. 60 years ago) and the latest edition published in 1412 AH (18 years ago), he has provided up to thirteen (13) authentic texts to prove that niqab was not a compulsory practice for the generality of women during the time of the Prophet. Yet these niqabists, in their determination to maintain their false view on niqab, would always cite only about four or five texts and claim that is all they know about the proofs of the argument against niqab. The truth is that, in their attempt to reject the argument against compulsory niqab, the niqabists always shrewdly select only few of the hadiths (against niqab) which they feel they can reply to – pretending to be unaware of all the other hadtiths which they find too powerful to challenge.
Another crime committed by Professor Bashier, which further illustrates the niqabists propensity for distorting facts to support their duplicity, is featured in the following passage (p21):
Al-Albani, who was the original jurist to state the moderate trend, did not say that veiling the face is not part of the Muslim woman’s hijab. All that he said is that covering the face, though it may be commendable and desired, and indeed even obligatory for women of exceptional infatuating beauty*, is generally not obligatory.
This statement is untrue. What Imam Albani said is that although he personally recommended niqab to his wife and daughter yet he does not see it as a compulsory practice for any woman. To clear any doubt, let me transliterate Imam Albani’s Arabic words (p28) before translating them into English:
… Fa haazaa al-hadith al-sahih yuqarriru anna kashfa almarr’ati an wajhihaa – wa law kaanat jameelatan – haqaun lahaa . . . wa laisa li ahadin an yamna’ahaa min dhaalika bi rugami khashyati al-iftitaani bihaa.
Meaning:
… This authentic hadith therefore rules that if the woman exposes her face – even if she is beautiful - it is her right… and it is not for anybody to stop her from that in spite of the threat of temptation from her.
* Underline is my own emphasisSo which Albani is that saying that niqab is obligatory for a beautiful woman? Let Bashier answer us now! If a beautiful woman dresses up flamboyantly with the intention to display her beauty before men out there, that is a sinful behaviour. But if she goes out in modest clothing without any evil intention, then she is innocent of whatever temptation men may get from her appearance. After all, is it the woman’s fault that she is beautiful? No. The woman did not create her own beauty; it was given to her by Allah the Creator as a blessing and not as a curse; her beauty is meant to safeguard her husband’s attention to her.
Imam Albani (p27) has reported some of the niqabist scholars as suggesting to him that although his findings against compulsory niqab are convincing and compelling, he should stop publishing such findings because that could open the door for the women to start indulging in immoral display of their beauty. But he replied to them that he could not be hiding his findings because the Qur’an (2:159) has strictly prohibited the concealment of knowledge.
One crucial point deserves a special attention. Throughout the centuries, compulsory niqab has been known to be the opinion of a minority of Islamic scholars – a fact acknowledged even by those authorities advocating compulsory niqab. But, surprisingly, some of the recent publications of the niqabists have been making subtle attempts to portray compulsory niqab as the view of the overwhelming majority of Islamic scholars. (See Tarbiyyatu Al-Awlaad fee Al-Islam, p151). Are these niqabists becoming so desperate that they would attempt to rewrite the history of Islam to favour their unsustainable sentimental viewpoint?
Given the enormous depth of dishonesty and intellectual fraud of some of the niqabist scholars, one is not surprised that their students tend to display all kinds of symptoms of hypocricy. For instance, Imam Albani reported one alarming development which calls for these niqabists to be checked as a matter of urgency. According to Albani (p17), there is a new phenomenon of some young girls in Arab countries dismissing the Prophet’s prohibition of niqab during hajj by shouting back: Nantaqib wa nafdee!!, which means, “We will wear the niqab (in hajj) and pay ransom” Glory be to Allah! A true believer can never dare challenge the injunction of the Prophet so openly. Allah the Exalled says in the Glorious Qur’an (33:36):
It is not for a believing man or a believing woman, when Allah and His Messenger have decided a matter, that they should (thereafter) have any choice about their affair. And whoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger has certainly strayed into clear error.
As such, those women who so openly challenge the Prophet’s prohibition of niqab in hajj must be having motives other than faith in wearing the niqab.
It is not long ago when a Muslim brother came to me complaining that his sister who was a medical student at the Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria had decided to drop-out of the medical school because she was being disturbed because of her niqab. I asked in my shock and dismay: “So is it because of niqab she is dropping-out of the medical school?!” He answered “Yes”. Then I heaved a big sigh and yelled out: “O Allah! Just who are those devils sabotaging the future of this Ummah by misleading these young Muslims?!” Then I said to the brother: “Go and tell your sister that she is free to leave the medical school today because she does not want a man to see her face. Fair enough! But let her bear in mind that tomorrow she will go to hospital with her gynaecological/obstetric problems and the same man will look deep inside her pudenda itself”.
8 SOME WORTHWHILE QUESTIONS
In reaction to my publication on “the Misuse of Niqab in the Nigerian Society” in 2008, two most frequently asked questions, which I considered to be genuine inquiries, were raised by my respected readers. Firstly, they pointed out that my condemnation of the abuse of niqab was rather general in its scope, that I should have considered those who might be using niqab sincerely. Secondly they asked if it is right for us to abandon any particular sunnah of the Prophet simply because some people abuse it. They generally cited (as an example) the growing of beard, which is sunnah but is now widely used to feign piety and delude people who may perceive long beard as a sign of commitment to faith - should we stop growing beards because of this?
With regard to the first point or question, I wish to draw attention to the Islamic legal principle which says that Anniyyatul hasanatu laa tubarrirul haraam, meaning, “Good intention does not legitimize the illegitimate”. Islam does not permit a Muslim to undertake any good action as an act of personal worship or devotion to Allah if such good action will cause harm to any (innocent) person or persons. Even in the daily obligatory prayers we are taught that when praying alone one is free to prolong the prayer as much as he likes, but it is unlawful to over-prolong the same prayer when leading other people in a congregation – because that may cause harm or inconvenience to the aged, the sick and the busy ones among the people in the congregation. As such, since identity-hiding niqab is a threat to public security, from Islamic point of view, no Muslim woman will be right to do it even if she has the best intentions in the world. Islam’s memory cannot be so short as to allow one good-minded person to hide her identity with niqab so that a dozen other evil-minded ones may take advantage to hide their identity and hold the general public hostage. In the final analysis, therefore, the question of considering those who may use identity-hiding niqab sincerely, Islamically speaking, cannot even arise at all. Niqab can only be worn in an exclusively private environment. For example, the woman may decide to put on niqab if alien male visitors enter her house. But she cannot cover her face in public places – that will be anti-Islamic, because it will be threatening to public security.
Regarding the second question, to begin with, it is simply incorrect to refer to identity-hiding niqab as sunnah – just as it will be wrong to fast for several days unbroken and call that sunnah, or to marry nine women and call it sunnah – for, as we explained earlier on, the Prophet’s wives may have covered themselves from head to toe but their identities were by no means hidden. Further, we may need to understand that problems are of two categories: intrinsic problems and instrumental problems. An intrinsic problem is one which is a problem in itself, an inherent problem. An instrumental problem, on the other hand, is one which is not a problem in itself but has only been turned into a problem. Identity-hiding niqab is an intrinsic problem. The security of any social group, right from the family level up to the societal level, primarily depends on the ability of its members to identify one another effectively. Therefore any practice which inhibits the process of effective identification of individuals in a social group is fundamentally problematic and inherently threatening to the security of that social group. It is instructive to note that Islam, which proceeds from the infallible Wisdom of Allah, can never create an intrinsic problem. As elucidated by Shaikh Al-Uthaimin (2004:37-42), rather than create problems, the Sharee’ah repels problems at all costs. Therefore, any supposed Islamic practice found to be an intrinsic problem must have been smuggled into Islam (or, to say the least, must have been applied off-context) and not part of the originality of Islam. The basic principle of the Sharee’ah is that every single sunnah established by the Prophet (pbuh) was for the benefit of society and not because of its own inherent merits. The Glorious Qur’an (21:107) says:
And We have not sent you, (O Muhammad), except as a mercy to the worlds.
Therefore, if at any point in time a particular sunnah of the Prophet (pbuh) is being abused, what is needed to be done is to simply weigh the benefits of that sunnah against the harm resulting from its abuse. If the harm of the abuse is minimal as compared to the benefit, that sunnah will be maintained in spite of the abuse. But if the harm of the abuse is significantly greater than the benefit of that sunnah, then that sunnah is thrown away - for the simple fact that is has ceased to be sunnah because it is bringing harm instead of good to society, and the abuse cannot be checked. That is how the Companions understood and practised the Prophets sunnah, and they objected to the judgments of those among them who insisted on following the Prophet’s Sunnah blindly without due regard for conditions and circumstances. In this respect Al-Bukhari has reported Umar Ibn Al-Khattab as saying (see Al-Tajreed, p384):
Our best reciter of the Qur’an is Ubai, and our best judge is Ali. But we disregard some of the statements of Ubai, and that is because Ubai says: “I will not leave anything I heard from the Messenger of Allah”, in spite of the fact that Allah says: We do not abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten except that we bring forth (one) better than it or similar to it. Do you not know that Allah is over all things competent? (Qur’an 2:106).
Beard, on the other hand, is a natural inalienable common feature of manhood and is thus cherished by men cross-culturally. Indeed, my personal experience over the years has unveiled to me that if you gather today’s Muslims and sign a covenant with them, those with the longest beards among them would likely turn out to be the most disappointing (in terms of sincerity, commitment and dedication) of them all. The truth is that although these beards are grown under the slogan of Sunnah, the real motivating factor behind the popularity of that practice is the attributes of manhood attached to the beard and not Sunnah per se. Moreover, Islam is not the only philosophy that cherishes beard. For instance, the beards of communist lords – Karl Marx, Friedrick Engels, Fidel Castro, etc – are much longer than that of any Muslim I have ever seen. In a nutshell, beard is simply nothing peculiar to Islam. Furthermore, beard in itself does not have any inherent problem in society. If anyone uses beard as a sign of integrity (in whatever context) to stupefy or blackmail people, that is a mere instrumental problem. Again, the growing of beard does not encroach on the rights of other people; in Islamic legal terminology, Laisa feehi odwaanun alaa haqqil guyri. In other words, beard does not go along with any inalienable rights or entitlements. In yet still a simpler expression, someone’s beard may be as long as touching his feet, Islam does not require you to trust that person on the basis of his long beard – if your are so naive or simple-minded as to trust him on account of his long beard, then, you can only have yourself (and not Islam) to blame for whatever the consequences may be. That is completely different from identity-hiding niqab which confers on the wearer unquestionable integrity and unrestricted access (even when others have the right to question and restrict her in the course of performing their official duties or in defence of their legitimate interests), to the extent that the niqabist have made a subtle attempt to justify the killing of someone who demands to see the face of one hiding under niqab – (see Tarbiyyatu al Awlaad fee al Islam, by Alwaan, 2002, vol. 1, p 151). Sob’haanallaahi ammaa yasifoon!: Glory be to Allah – He is free from the evil they ascribe to Him!
9 THE PROBLEM WITH OUR THINKING
TODAY
One of the biggest problems facing Muslims today is the mentality of “no one has said it before”. As I elucidated in my book titled “The Half-Scholar of Islam”, Islamic thought today is torn between two evils: dogmatic assertion and wishful thinking. On the one hand is the so-called clerics who have crammed arsenals of Arabic vocabulary (in the name of Qur’an and Hadith) which they can only regurgitate, because they do not really understand what they have memorized. This category of Islamic thinkers never have their own thinking and can only make, and always make, dogmatic references to what was said by their predecessors. On the other hand is the so-called “Western educated Muslims”. The actors in this second group are Arabic illiterate and not learned in the principles of Islam, yet, frustrated by the dogmatism and inaction of the so-called clerics in the face of retrogression and rapid deterioration of matters, have taken the interpretation of Islam into their own hands in spite of their ignorance of the legal principles of Islam. The corollary is that their Islamic views on matters arising are based on wishful thinking rather than established principles of Islam. The relationship between the two camps of thought identified here is one of mutual suspicion, mutual distrust and, to a large extent, mutual contempt. Our discussion here will not dwell on the second camp, but the first one.
The first camp deserves greater attention for the simple fact that it is the cause of the second one. The following passage is a quotation from my first book on niqab titled “The Abuse of Islam…” (2008:35).
… much of the details of the Islamic law as we have it today came from the pronouncements of the second to the sixth generations of the icons of Islamic scholarship – including the four orthodox Imams: Abu Haneefah, Malik, Ash-shafi’i and Ahmad Ibn Hanbal. Unfortunately, as Al-Qaradawi rightly lamented(Bello, 2003:84), the so-called Islamic scholars of today, far from having their own thinking, only know how to make rigid and dogmatic references to the volumes of publications left behind by these Imams, forgetting that these Imams produced their volumes only in their striving to re-interpret and illuminate the Islamic message to reflect the new realities of their own time, and that if these Imams were alive today they would revise their own volumes to reflect the circumstances and conditions of the present day. In fact, as explained by Al-Qaradawi, these Imams revised some of their own rulings later in their lives to reflect changed conditions. This is particularly elaborate in the case of Imam As-Shafi’i who is known for having two maz’habs (schools of thought). These two are usually referred to as the old maz’hab and the new maz’hab. Imam Shafi’i lived in Baghdad where he developed the old maz’hab. Then he moved to Egypt where he re-interpreted his rulings to reflect the conditions of his new (Egyptian) environment, hence the new maz’hab.
If you enter any of our Islamic libraries you would find hundreds of thousands of titles and volumes. But the truth is that many (if not most) of these thousands of volumes are nothing more than mere repetitions of other volumes with new arrangements of the same chapters and points only. For centuries now there have been only few creative Islamic writers - that is, those who research into current or emerging issues with new penetrating intellectual insights. And that is why the condition of the Muslim Ummah toady is not only terrible but is getting worse by the hour. If someone publishes a book saying what no one has said before, that exactly is the merit of his book. A book is totally redundant if it merely repeats what others have already said. In “The Half-Scholar of Islam” (p6) I quoted the following words from Sayyid Maududi:
When we examine our intellectual history we find that for several centuries research work had more or less stopped. All our study and teaching was limited to the early schools of learning. The concept that the work of our ancestors was the last word in learning and research and nothing can be added to it had taken deep root in our educational thinking. To cover the books of the writers of the early ages with new coatings of commentaries and footnotes was considered the highest form of devotion to knowledge and these were all that kept our authors busy in writing and our teachers busy in imparting. It is but rarely that one comes across an example of a new thought, any new research or new discovery in the past few centuries. This led to complete intellectual stagnation.
When I drafted the manuscript of this book I sent it over to a learned friend of mine, a reputed Islamic scholar somewhere in Northern Nigeria, for perusal. After going through the manuscript, the learned friend returned it to me with seven pages of notes. In his notes he commended my book with enormous gratitude and went ahead to launch a strong criticism on those who oppose my writings on the basis of sheer sentiment and superficiality without careful and intelligent examination of my arguments. However, to my surprise, quite disappointingly, my learned friend soon fell victim to the same sentiment he had condemned when he concluded his notes with the following passage:
On the other hand, I would like to candidly advise the Author on two issues. First, the issue of security threat/implication – which runs through the entire book – needs to be carefully analysed, reviewed and presented to the general public so as not to give “room/opening” to the enemies of Islam against the religion and its sincere and innocent adherents. It is known to all and sundry that the enemies are always waiting for an opportunity from within Islam itself to strike and wreck an irreparable havoc on it.
Second, the issue of preventing an individual Muslim woman who made it a duty upon her (ONLY) self to wear Niqab from doing so, is an overstatement which is uncalled for. The Author brought this on p.57, paragraph 1 [now p.62 paragraph 2] of his book. There is no authority in Islam that says someone has the right to prevent her from doing what is permissible with the aim of getting the pleasure of Allah. But whenever a situation arises in which her identity is required to be known, nothing stops the authority concerned from making necessary arrangements to ascertain her identity for good or for bad.
It was the above-quoted words of my friend which led me to create the present chapter (chapter 9) of this book. Let me emphasize that I simply have no doubt about the sincerity of this friend of mine, for I sent the book to him for perusal because of certain qualities I had known of him – depth of learning and outspokenness. As such I took these words of his as an expression of his most sincere opinion. However, his observations as stated above are obviously faulty and sentimental. To begin with, “The security threat/implication” we are here talking about is not the security of enemies of Islam; it is actually about our own security, the security of the Muslims themselves. Security is an objective value; it is a fundamental, inalienable and non-negotiable requirement for every society irrespective of religious orientation. In chapter one and the conclusion of this book I have provided a detailed account of how criminals hide under niqab to “wreck an irreparable havoc” on our own (Muslim) societies. It is a fact that most of the trouble-spots around the world today are Muslim areas. Only Allah can tell how much niqab is contributing to create the troubles besetting Muslim societies of today – because niqab is a suitable tool for any kind of underground operation. Moreover, niqab is a practice which can be exploited by the very enemies of Islam we are worried about. Of course we never know how to take advantage of our enemies because we are always driven by sentiment; but our enemies always take advantage of us because they are driven by intelligence. Niqab is obviously an excellent instrument for espionage, which the enemies of Islam can harness to spy on, monitor the movements of, and launch attacks on Muslims. I remember a student of the Ahmadu Bello University once complaining bitterly that their Christian counterparts in the University would meet and decide on anything and no Muslim would ever hear of it “but when we Muslims meet and decided something it will be divulged everywhere even before we could leave the venue of the meeting!” Then I said to him: “That is because you Muslims of toady do so many foolish things in the name of sunnah. For instance, those who come to your meetings under the cover of niqab, how could you be so sure that they are all Muslims?”
In view of all these simple observations, it is certainly disappointing to hear anyone say that enemies of Islam will take advantage of our pointing out the security implications of niqab. This is the usual problem with Muslims today: when you suggest to them to protect their own interest, they accuse you of seeking to promote somebody else’s interest instead. In the year 2008 when I published my first book on niqab with chapters reading “No Defence of Thesis in Niqab” and “No Niqab in the Classroom”, some Muslims accused me of what they referred to as “opening the door for the enemies of Islam to molest our sisters in lecture halls and during defence of thesis”. One simple truth which is beyond the imagination of those myopic Muslims who said these words is that by allowing criminal elements in our midst to hide under niqab and destroy academic standards in our educational institutions we are actually destroying our own intellectual heritage and educational future; it is a mistake to think that it is our enemies we are hurting thereby.
In another sense, it is high time we stopped complaining about how our enemies attack us and instead began to examine what we do to invite our enemies to attack us. Shaikh Al-Qaradawi has often made this point in his writings. “Uhud is as much a sign-post for Islam as Badr”, says Abdullah Yusuf Ali in his Commentary on the Qur’an (Note 449). Regrettably, we the so-called Muslims of today are only and always interested in recounting the success of Badr even though we never do anything to deserve a similar success, but we are never willing to reflect on the failure of Uhud even though we always do everything that warrants a similar failure. Unless we turn the moral search-light upon ourselves now, we should expect not only more attacks but even our total extermination by our so-called enemies - because Allah the Exalted has no regard for hypocrites who are not willing to clean their own back-yard, even if such hypocrites call themselves Muslims and pray five million times a day. If, for instance, a particular practice is objectively threatening to public security and yet we dogmatically impose it on the public in the name of Islam, then we are telling people that Islam itself is a security threat. In that case, we are not only inviting people to attack Islam but we are legitimizing their attacks on Islam. As an analytical example, go to Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria and see the dilemma of the security personnel manning the entrance gates to the University. The security officers have been ordered to check the identity of people entering the University premises, so everyone has to produce his/her identity card before entering. Unfortunately, those who arrive at the gates under the cover of niqab are left alone to go in without verification of their identities. There is simply no doubt that no one with minimum training in security techniques would voluntarily tolerate people passing through security check-points with unverified identities. As such, these security personnel, who include our fellow Muslims, know very well that allowing these people with covered faces to enter without being checked could cost them their jobs one day since criminals could hide under that practice to sneak into the University campus with criminal intents. But these security men are afraid of the religious crises that may erupt if they attempt to see a face that is marked unseeable in the name of Islam. The logical point here is that if tomorrow there is security breach on the campus of the University, then the security men there have a valid reason to blame it on Islam and Muslims because it was only in the name of Islam some people passed through the security check-points without being checked. This is a typical illustration of how we usually impose nonsense on people in defiant infraction of the clear principles of our own faith and when they resist such nonsense we say they are attacking Islam. The worse attacks on Islam today are launched by Muslims themselves. I cannot think of any way to attack Islam worse than to attribute fraud-facilitating practice like identity-hiding niqab to Islam. Those who are inclined to impose dangerous nonsense such as niqab on the public should count themselves as number one enemies of Islam, for they are the ones who incite unnecessary hatred against Islam and Muslims around the world.
With regard to the second issue raised by my learned friend, it is not right to describe the proposition that identity-hiding niqab should be stopped as “an overstatement”. For that proposition is not a sentimental expression or an empty declaration; it is actually founded on two undisputed Islamic legal principles. The first is the principle that disallows an individual believer to undertake a personal act of devotion in a way injurious to another individual. The second is the principle that places the right of society above the right of an individual. Security is the right of society (which includes that same individual). Since there is no doubt that identity-hiding in public constitutes a threat to societal security, to say that an individual has the right to hide her identity in public is tantamount to saying that her right supersedes that of society or that she is allowed to seek Allah’s pleasure even by means injurious to other people – which is all contrary to the position of Islam. The point is as simple and straightforward as that – there is simply no complexity in it at all.
Two salient points raised by my learned friend on his objection to the call to stop public practice of niqab deserve some more examination. The first is the assertion that “There is no authority in Islam” to support the proposition that public practice of niqab should be stopped. It is important we understand that, in the Islamic legal dispensation, when someone makes a pronouncement, what is to be done is to find out whether his pronouncement is based on an established Islamic principle. If it is not, then we reject it outrightly as baseless. But if, on the other hand, it is based on an established Islamic principle, then we proceed to find out whether his interpretation of that principle is correct. If it is not, then we reject it as out-of-context. But if it is correct then his pronouncement becomes an authentic Islamic position regardless of his own status. We cannot (in spite of the fact that his view is based on a correct interpretation of an established Islamic principle) reject his pronouncement merely because well-known past scholars did not say what he has said. Knowledge is progressive. Moreover, it should be noted that the authorities we refer to did not make their rulings out of wistfulness; they made their rulings on the basis of the legal principles of Islam which stand as guidelines for Muslims of all generations. Those authorities were responsible for their own time, and we are today responsible for our own time. Let the Qur’an (2: 134) itself speak:
That was a people that passed away. They shall reap the fruit of what they did, and you of what you do! And you shall not be asked about what they did.
In making appointments for His mission, Allah’s criterion is not “big name” or “big personality”. The Qur’an (2:105) says: But Allah selects for His Special Mercy whom He wills, and Allah is the possessor of great bounty. And often there are several succeeding appointees for a single mission. One person may be appointed to start the mission; then another person comes later to complete the mission; then, still, another person follows up later as a reformer of that mission, and so on. We should be careful not to behave like the people depicted in the following verses of the Qur’an (43:31 – 32).
And they said, “Why was this Qur’an not sent down to some learned man in either of the two (chief) cities? Is it they who would portion out the mercy of your Lord? It is we who have apportioned among them their livelihood in the life of this world and have raised some of them above others in degrees (of rank) that they may make use of one another for service. But the mercy of your Lord is better than whatever they accumulate.
The second point made by my friend is that it is only when a situation arises demanding the disclosure of the identity of the wearer of niqab that she would be asked to uncover her face. What I will simply say here is that we must stop joking with serious matters; we must stop playing with sensitive issues. The issue of security is never an issue to be taken lightly in any societal setting. And as I explained earlier on, as far as human groups are concerned, security and identity are two sides of the same coin. To say that it is right for anyone to move about undercover unless her identity is required is a betrayal of an extremely narrow view of the concept of identity. From security point of view, any person moving about with a disguised identity (i.e. a covered face) is naturally a suspect because if there is need to trace him/her up later for security purposes, he/she cannot be traced up since he/she is not identifiable. There are many instances when people committed crimes and disappeared but through the description by eye-witnesses the security agents were able to search and identify the perpetrators. In the industrialized countries security cameras form an integral part of their security networks. These security cameras are installed in public avenues (i.e. market places, educational institutions, hospitals, etc.) to photograph and record the movements of people who go in-and-out of such public places so that if later a criminal activity is reported in any of these public places the police would simply retrieve the photograph of the suspect from the security cameras and then use this photograph to search for him/her. In the case of niqab neither an eye-witness description nor security cameras can be of help. Let me recount an incident which was reported to have happened somewhere close to my house some months back. A niqabbed person went to a shop to buy something. As he/she left the shop he/she did away with the shop owner’s mobile telephone which the owner had kept on the counter. By the time the shop owner discovered her mobile phone missing, the culprit was already out of reach. Now, since this was a local shop, the culprit might have come from within the locality and might have been known to the shop owner. But because his/her faced was covered there was no way he/she could be identified. So when we talk of someone’s identity being required it should not be conceived narrowly to mean reference to a formal situation such as formal school examinations or security check-ups. As far as we are dealing with the general public, the demand for identity is permanent and constant; anybody sitting or moving in public (i.e. on the streets, market places, schools, hospitals, etc) is supposed to have an open identity, so that she can be traced up later in case the need arises.
But even if we agree that it is only on formal occasions such as examinations and security check-ups that someone’s identity is required, how many of the users of niqab will be prepared to accept that? A deep-dyed niqabist will prefer to die rather than show her face for identification, to the extent that there have been reports of a niqabbed student refusing to answer lecturers’ questions because her ignorant poisonous scholars who ingrained the niqab on her mind have made her to believe that even her voice is naked so she will be committing a sin by letting a man hear her voice. My most recent personal experience in this respect was on Friday the 16th of October, 2009, when I went to invigilate LVT GENS102 examination at the Ahmadu Bello University. One of the 104 candidates inside the examination hall showed me her examination ID card but left her face covered. Then I asked her: “How do I believe that this ID card really belongs to you if I cannot check your face against the photograph on the ID card?! To accept this ID card as authentic without seeing your face will amount to shahaadatuzzoor (false testimony) which is among the greatest sins in the Islamic faith, and as a devout Muslim I will rather resign from the University today than commit the sin of shahaadatuzzoor”. No amount of explanation would persuade her to comply with my demand. Then I said to her: “Your behaviour is a clear revelation that you’re not the bonafide candidate of this exam, that this ID card is not for you; because I can’t understand that the face I’m now seeing in the photograph of this ID card is the same face you’re hiding from me. Are you really a fraudster?!” Eventually I had to send her out of the examination hall – she did not write the paper – because she vowed not to show her face for identification and I vowed not to allow her to write the exam without identification either. While she was walking away I gave her this parting shot: “I hope that the photographer who looked at your face critically and then snapped the photograph you have attached to your ID card was your husband or your father or your brother or your son and not any other man!”
The simple truth is that the conundrum of niqab has reached such a magnitude that only an outright ban on public use of niqab can save the society from the treachery of that practice. Hitherto the debate was between those who saw niqab as a compulsory practice and those who viewed it as an optional practice. We are now taking the debate a step further to uncover the fact that niqab is not only not a compulsory practice, but also, it is not a public practice. If past authorities did not see anything wrong with public practice of niqab, it is because they did not examine the issue from the security angle. Hitherto the research had centered on availability and authenticity of textural evidence on the existence of niqab in the history of Islam. We are now looking at it from the security perspective and as a result we are discovering that niqab as a public practice is characterized by such enormous amount of naivity and absurdity absolutely incompatible with the wise Sunnah of the Prophet (pbuh), which means that the texts being used to make niqab a public practice must have been misconceived and misinterpreted. It will be an injustice to the integrity of our learned, conscientious, pious predecessors if we assume that if they were alive today they would ignore the terrible security implications that have emerged about niqab and insist that it is an indispensable Sunnah of the Prophet (pbuh).
While I was in the process of commenting on my friend’s remarks, the news media (on 8th October, 2009) announced that the authorities of the University of Al-Azhar in Cairo had placed a ban on the use of niqab on the campus of that University. Announcing the ban, the leader of the University, Shaikh Muhammad Tantawi, described niqab as a cultural practice and not an Islamic requirement. He challenged those who take it to be a religious requirement to come forward “with a single proof from the Qur’an or Sunnah” to that effect. I paused and made a prostration of gratitude to Allah, reciting the following words from the Qur’an (3:13): But Allah supports with His victory whom He wills. If people were looking for a famous Islamic personality to say it, it has now been said by no less an Islamic celebrity than Shaikh Tantawi himself, a man known for his Islamic erudition and courage, leader of the oldest and most prestigious Islamic University in the whole world. In 2008 when I published my first book on niqab stating that “the evil of niqab as an identity-hider, in terms of sowing discord and confusion among Muslims and between Muslims and non-Muslims, and in terms of misrepresenting Islam to the wider world, has reached such magnitudes that if the Prophet (pubh) were alive today he would simply outlaw that practice as categorically as he outlawed temporary marriage”, people’s reactions here in Nigeria reached the extent of proclaiming me a kafir (disbeliever). But in the face of all odds I went ahead to post the book on the internet. Response from my internet readers was very positive, and I believed that it was only a matter of time before dramatic measures would be taken against identity-hiding niqab. If only Shaikh Tantawi now agrees with me, I thank Allah from the bottommost of my heart - because I know that Shaikh Tantawi commands the hearts of millions of Muslims around the world.
Although, according to the news media, Shaikh Tantawi is believed to be planning a total ban on the use of niqab on the premises and all affiliated colleges of the University of Al-Azhar, the statement of Thursday’s ban read as follows:
The supreme council of Al-Azhar has decided to ban students and teachers from wearing the niqab inside female-only classrooms, that are taught by women only… (Global TV News).
The statement also extended the ban to female dormitories in the University. In spite of the fact that the announcement limited the ban to female-only classrooms and dormitories, yet a small band of sentimental individuals who were labelled as Islamic scholars grew mad about the announcement. Of course their agitations could not go beyond mere dogmatic assertion of what they claimed to be the right of those who choose to wear niqab, whereupon they unknowingly exposed their ignorance about the concept of rights in Islam. Nevertheless, the fundamental question these so-called Islamic scholars ought to have answered is this: Let us assume that niqab is a genuine Islamic requirement to protect women from lustful glances of men, but what is the need for niqab in female-only classrooms and dormitories?! Does Islam also require women to hide the beauty of their faces from their fellow women? The answer is ‘no’. As such, if any woman decides to wear niqab even in the midst of her fellow women, then the situation really calls for concern. Indeed, one of the Al-Azhar clerics, Shaikh Abdul Hamid Al-Atrash, stated in support of the ban:
There have been instances of men entering [schools for girls] under cover. So there is no reason why a ruling that benefits the people and the nation cannot be issued. (Al-Jazeerah. Net).
Speaking prior to the announcement of the ban, another cleric of Al-Azhar, Shaihk Abdul Moati Bayoumi, stated:
…most scholars would back Tantawi if he issued the order. We all agree that niqab is not a religious requirement… The phenomenon is spreading and it has to be confronted. The time has come. (Al-Jazzeera. Net).
Let me repeat words that are worth repeating. We should not be talking about anyone’s right to do A or B without remembering the principles governing the Islamic concept of rights. In addition to the fact that Islam places the rights of society above the rights of the individual, so that the right of an individual becomes null and void once it contravenes the right of society, it is also an established principle of Islam that an individual cannot undertake any personal act of worship or devotion if such an act would cause harm to another (innocent) individual. To wit, Islam will not permit an individual Muslim woman to seek the pleasure of Allah by making it, in my friend’s words, “a duty upon her (ONLY) self to wear niqab” if her wearing niqab will cause harm to another individual or society. In the Islamic doctrinal dispensation one is allowed to undertake a special personal act of devotion only if the (negative) effect of that act is intransitive (i.e. is limited to the actor alone).
It was shameful to hear one of the so-called Islamic scholars (who objected to Shaikh Tantawi’s ban) saying, in an interview with the BBC, that inasmuch as some women are free to wear obscene dresses the wearers of niqab should be left undisturbed in spite of all the security threats. The simple question he should have answered is this: “Do those women who wear the obscene dresses do so in the name of Allah and His Messenger?” The contrast is actually between one doing evil in the name of the Devil and another doing evil in the name of Allah and His Messenger. Let the point be stated in the clearest possible tone now: Public use of niqab is an evil practice – because it facilitates a whole spectrum of vices and crimes, and it is blasphemous to attribute any evil practice to Islam. The Glorious Qur’an (7:28) says:
And when they commit an immorality, they say, “We found our fathers doing it, and Allah has ordered us to do it” Say, “Indeed, Allah does not order immorality. Do you say about Allah that which you do not know?”
CONCLUSION
Two cardinal points ought to be profusely clear by now. One: Niqab has never been, and can never be, an obligatory practice for the generality of Muslim women. The full argument of the exponents of obligatory niqab has been critically examined in the light of the logical principles of Islam and found to be nothing more than chaff. To cover the face and walk in public undercover is too serious a practice (for both the woman and the society) to be sanctioned by a ruling based on speculative and conjectural interpretation (conveniently described as strict interpretation though) of Qur’anic verses or hadith. What would it have cost Allah or His Messenger to issue a clear injunction to the Muslim woman to cover her face if Allah or His Messenger had really desired it so? Two: Niqab is not meant to be a general public practice – for identity-hiding in public is an indisputable threat to societal security. Since Islam does not create problems for society at all, any interpretation of Islam which legitimizes the fundamentally problematic practice of identity-hiding in public must be mistaken. Hitherto the debate on niqab was between two opposing camps: the camp asserting that it is an obligatory practice, which is a totally baseless opinion, and the camp saying that it is mashroo’ (ordained) but not obligatory. The view of the second camp was based on the fact that the Prophet’s wives wore niqab – otherwise neither the Qur’an nor the Prophet ever ordered the practice of niqab anywhere. However, this book represents a third camp with the proposition that, although the Prophet’s wives wore niqab, public use of niqab actually belongs to the category of the Prophet´s practices that are not be emulated by the generality of Muslims in view of the spiritual differences between the Prophet (pbuh) and other (ordinary) humans. Therefore, niqab is not a practice meant for the general public. It is a misconception to refer to niqab (for public use) as Sunnah merely bacuase the Prophet’s wives wore niqab, for not only that the Prophet’s wives were well-known to all and sundry but also they never moved about freely in public places(i.e, schools, hospitals, markets and streets).
In condemning religious extremism, Shaikh Al-Qaradawi (1991:27) pointed out that one of the defects of excessive practice of any religious tenet is that “it jeopardizes other rights and obligations”. Indeed, if in our attempt to avoid the temptation of the woman’s beauty we employ sentiment to take the extreme measure of covering her face, then what shall we do about the crucial fact that the covering of her face will create in our midst identity confusion which is far more dangerous than sexual attraction? It is extremely disappointing that all we always do is to quote a particular scholar as interpreting a particular verse or hadith to mean that the woman should cover her face. But what did that scholar tell us about the critical question of identity confusion to be created by the covering of the face? We never care to ask. Identity-hiding niqab cannot be called sunnah, for although the Prophet’s wives covered themselves completely yet their identities were by no means hidden. Bid’ah (innovation), let me repeat words from my introduction, does not mean only what was not done by the Prophet (pbuh). Something may have been done by the Prophet but if it is copied or applied off-context, then it becomes a repugnant innovation. For instance, there is no question at all that the Prophet (pbuh) and his
companions prayed five times daily. However, if someone observes the same five daily prayers but alters their hours or their number of rak’ats, then his prayers become a despicable innovation within the laws of Islam. Similarly, if the Prophet did something because it was safe for him to do it, it will be repugnantly innovative for us to imitate same even when it is dangerous for us to do so.
Let it be made crystal clear that Islam did not coin niqab; niqab was part of pre-Islamic Arab culture. As explained by Shaikh Mustapha Muhammad Al-Tahhan, in his book titled Al-Marr’atu fee Mawkibi Al-Da’awah (1998:140), niqab, khimarr (head cover) and jilbaab (cloak or robe) were all worn by women in the pre-Islamic era. In the advent of Islam, the Qur’an upheld both the khimaarr (in Chapter 24:31) and the jilbaab (in Chapter 33:59) but made no mention of niqab at all. Not only that the Qur’an itself never ever mentioned niqab, Shaikh Tahhan continues, but even the Prophet (pbuh) ever mentioned niqab only once in the entire period of his mission, and that was when he issued an injunction prohibiting the use of niqab during ihram (pilgrimage) – there is no other authentic text anywhere of the Prophet ever mentioning the word niqab apart from this. In other words, the only occasion when the Prophet (pbuh) ever uttered the word niqab was in a negative context - a context of disapproval. As such, even if niqab were not a problematic practice, the simple fact that the Qur’an made no mention of it at all and the Prophet ever mentioned it only once (and in a negative context) is a clear indication of what little significance Islam attaches to that practice. Consequently, it is amazing that something so insignificantly regarded by Islam should come to assume such a position of enormous attention and contention among Muslims as we have it today.
Within the general nature of Islam as a religion of wisdom and prudence, identity-hiding niqab is not only an oddity which is really a source of confusion but is also a defeat of the Islamic purpose. Common stories of horrendous underground sex crimes facilitated by identity-hiding niqab in today’s Saudi Arabia (where niqab is compulsory for all women) are just too disgusting to hear. But such crimes cannot remain underground for very long, and it is only a matter of time before they will explode, unless wise measures are adopted to reverse them now. How magnificent are the following words of the Prophet as related by Abu Hurairah: “Verily the religion [of Islam] is easy. Never has anyone challenged this Religion [by overdoing it] but that it overcomes him”. When you see the number of niqab users increasing in Nigerian markets, schools and streets, the wrong impression you get is that faith is gathering momentum. But the truth is that more and more criminals are discovering the instrumentality of niqab, hence the rapid rise in the number of niqab users.
It should be remembered that Islam has rules and regulations governing the prohibition of evil. One of such rules is that a method employed to fight an evil should not lead to another evil greater than the one being fought. Bellow is a summary of some of the terrible crimes facilitated by niqab in some Muslim communities today, according to public accounts:
- Young girls use it to elude their parents/guardians in order to flirt with boys;
- Both Muslim and non-Muslim women, including married ones, use it to prostitute about;
- Married Muslim men use it to delude friends and relatives in order to indulge with prostitutes. The man starts by forcing his own wife to be wearing niqab. Because everyone knows that his wife wears niqab, when he is seen in the company of a niqabed prostitute no one can realize that it is not his own wife;
- One doctor at the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital in Zaria told me how HIV-positive non-Muslim women used to disguise themselves with niqab when coming for treatment. So when you see that many of the people entering the HIV/AIDS ward are in niqab you take the wrong impression that most HIV/AIDS carriers are Muslims;
- Promiscuous men hide under it to mingle with women at hen-parties and other exclusive female gatherings (without the women knowing that there are men in their midst);
- Men disguise themselves with it to enter people’s houses and commit adultery with their wives. A niqabed visitor enters your house and proceeds straight to your wife’s room and you innocently leave them alone, thinking it is her fellow woman, not knowing it is a man. The scam becomes much easier for them when you leave the house (for the market, the farm, the office, etc);
- Prostitutes use it as an alternative (natural) form of bleaching – the face glitters after being covered constantly for days or weeks. Some have recourse to niqab when they are defaced by excessive artificial bleaching – they use niqab to conceal their spotted/blackened faces, until they are healed or recovered.
- All the above come in addition to the well-known crimes of stealing, kidnapping, spying, impersonation and examination malpractices - which are all perpetrated under the cover of niqab.
At this point I want to ask: who among us would be happy to have his name associated with all the heinous crimes listed above?! How then can we tolerate that for the Prophet (pbuh) if we really love him sincerely?! Is it not true that one of the fundamental principles of Islam is that you shall not tolerate for your fellow Muslim - much less for the Prophet himself - except what you shall tolerate for yourself?! And how sacrilegious it is for us to imagine that the Prophet (pbuh), the most responsible leader, would have sat down quietly and allowed these heinous crimes to go on in his community in the name of his own sunnah?! And can we imagine how anguished the Prophet would have felt to see the Muslim woman come out (in the name of Islam) with such an appearance as typical of highjackers, armed robbers, in a word, people of the underworld?!
In the name of Allah my Creator and Cherishing Sustainer, I hereby call on every sensible believer who really loves the Prophet sincerely to resist the silence of cowardice and hypocrisy and join me to fight this evil innovation (identity-hiding niqab) perpetrated by criminal hypocrites in the name of the sunnah of our Holy Prophet (pbuh)! I have already barred it from my house, my office, my lecture hall and every other place under my control. The Prophet (pbuh) commands thus:
Whoever of you sees evil let him change it with his hand; and if he is not able to do so, then with his tongue; and if he is not able to do so, then with his heart – and that is the weakest of faith. (Muslim).
The obligation to fight an evil act becomes more incumbent when the evil act is committed in the name of Allah and His Messenger. For in that case the evil is multiplied: there is that evil act itself; then also, there is the (greater) evil of blasphemy in the form of attributing evil to Allah and His messenger.
May Allah the Most Merciful put us all among “Those who listen to speech and follow the best of it. Those are the ones Allah has guided, and those are the people of understanding” (Qur’an 39:18). And may Allah shower His peace and blessings upon our holy Prophet Muhammad.
وصلّ اللهم على من لا نبي بعده .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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NB: All quotations from the Arabic titles listed above are the author’s own translation of the Arabic texts.
posted by ISSAH HASSAN TIKUMAH at
3:51 AM
1 Comments:
Asallamu akaikum. I hope my fellow muslims will find this work useful in their lives,especially my muslim sisters.May The Almighty ALLAH continues to guide you and ur families as you accomplished this righteous works. Sallam.Ameen.M.Thaariq.
June 22, 2011 at 5:27 PM
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