and the statement of some other schools: “It is permissible to look at an unrelated woman—even at her ʿawrah (the parts that must be covered)—if it is done through a mirror.”

Some of them argued that the onlooker is merely seeing a reflection. To our regret, one of today’s Islamist parties—famous for cherry-picking from every legal school whatever it claims to serve its interests—has embraced this view. Worse still, it has treated the opinion as though it were an infallible text and used it to derive something even more corruptive and more directly tied to the lives and circumstances of our youth: the permissibility of viewing erotic images on television, in cinemas, and in magazines, on the same pretext that “it is only a reflection.”

Yet every rational person, even a non-Muslim, knows with certainty that such pictures are among the most powerful stimulants of youthful desire. Afterward, young people find no way to extinguish that desire except by committing acts that are explicitly forbidden—acts whose prohibition, even when classified merely as blocking the means, concerns the very look, the hearing, and similar matters alluded to by the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and grant him peace) in his words:

“…the fornication of the eyes is the gaze, the fornication of the tongue is speech; the soul longs and desires, and the private parts either confirm all of that or deny it.” Reported by al-Bukhari and Muslim and others⦗1⦘.

Nor is this the end of it. Not long ago that same party issued a bulletin openly declaring that it is permissible to kiss an unrelated woman when greeting her.