“I said: On their reasoning, a woman today may step out wearing those tight garments that cling to the body and trace it in minute detail, so that someone viewing her from afar might imagine she is naked!—such as those flesh-coloured stockings that reveal the shape of the calves and thighs and even enhance their beauty, indeed even panties that outline the very organ itself.
If a woman were to don such attire, it would be lawful for her in their view, because she has ‘covered the colour,’ even though she has in fact supplied her body with a hue lovelier than its natural one! Would any Muslim today pronounce this permissible? This is but one of the many proofs that independent juristic reasoning is obligatory and that blind imitation must be cast aside—so will anyone take heed?” End of their verbatim citation.

I say: This is the way that obstinate, unjust, spiteful simpleton has used the words he quoted from me to support his allegation that I disparage the followed Imams … and so on with the introduction he placed before it (the same old refrain we know from Akhzam). Anyone who considers his conduct can understand it in only one of two ways:

First: He does not agree with me that the garment covering the ʿawrah must be loose and spacious, not tight so that it outlines the ʿawrah. Rather, in his blind adherence to the Shāfiʿīs, he holds that there is no harm in wearing tight trousers; therefore he accepts the consequence I laid upon them, namely the permissibility of those tight clothes that cling to the body and define it, and so on, simply because they conceal the colour. I cannot believe he truly adopts this view if he still retains a grain of reason and religion. Yet if that is indeed his position, let him state it openly so that we may rebut him from within his own school—if the corruption and temptation that arise from wearing such tight garments do not already suffice to convince him of his error.