you are able to keep anyone from seeing it, then let no one see it.” I asked, “And if one of us is alone?” He replied, “Allah is worthier that you feel shy before Him.” Reported by Abu Dawud and others.

Allah has branded the exposure of the ʿawrah an obscenity when He said about the disbelievers: “Whenever they commit an obscenity they say, ‘We found our fathers doing it, and Allah commanded us to do it.’ Say, ‘Allah does not command obscenity’” (Qur’an 7:28). In the pre-Islamic period they would circumambulate the Kaʿbah naked and claim that this was part of the religion. Uncovering the ʿawrah and looking at it leads to grave evil; it opens the door to fornication and to the collapse of moral character, as is plain to see in permissive societies that have squandered their honor and destroyed their ethics, where vice is rampant and virtue scarcely found.

Covering the ʿawrah, then, safeguards virtue and morality. For that reason Satan is eager to entice the children of Adam into exposing their nakedness, and Allah has warned us: “O children of Adam, let not Satan tempt you as he expelled your parents from the Garden, stripping them of their garments to show them their nakedness” (Qur’an 7:27).

Thus the uncovering of nakedness is a satanic ruse into which many of today’s societies have fallen; they may even call it progress and sophistication. Nudist clubs have appeared, and immodesty among women has become widespread, so that they display their bodies before men without any sense of bashfulness or shame.