—that is, shaving it from the cheeks. Others maintained that mutilation means plucking the hair or dyeing it black, and Ibn Manẓūr says the same in Lisān al-ʿArab.

We have already cited the report transmitted by Ibn Isḥāq and Ibn Jarīr from Yazīd b. Abī Ḥabīb: the Messenger of Allah ﷺ disliked even to look at the two Magians who came in to him after they had shaved their beards and let their moustaches grow. He said to them, “Woe to you! Who ordered you to do this?” His censure fell on their shaving the beard and growing the moustache, for that distorts the face and makes it unsightly.

Once this is understood, let it also be understood that the only person who finds shaving the beard and growing the moustache attractive is someone whom Satan has duped and to whom he has adorned the disfigurement of his own face. Allah the Exalted says, “Is one whose evil deed has been made to seem fair to him so that he deems it good? Indeed, Allah leads astray whom He wills and guides whom He wills. So do not let your soul waste itself in regrets over them; surely Allah knows all that they do” (Qur’an 35:8). He also says, describing those who opposed the messengers, “And Satan made their deeds appear fair to them” (Qur’an 8:48).

Thus whoever shaves both his beard and his moustache, or shaves his beard while letting his moustache grow, or even shaves his beard alone, receives a share of the censure contained in these verses in proportion to his defiance of the Messenger’s command to let the beard grow and to trim the moustache, and in proportion to his aversion to the Prophet’s way—the very best way without exception.

Sixthly, we say to the author of that spurious article: If you claim that letting the beard grow thick disfigures a person, then what will you say about