some people (1) wear wool, saying, ‘Jesus, son of Mary, wore it.’ Yet someone whose truthfulness I do not doubt told me that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, wore linen, wool, and cotton; and the Sunnah of our Prophet has a greater claim to be followed.”

Ibn Sīrīn meant that some people consider wearing wool at all times better than wearing anything else, so they deliberately choose it and deny themselves other fabrics. Likewise, they confine themselves to a single style of clothing and adhere to particular conventions, arrangements, and appearances, considering any departure from them reprehensible. Yet what is reprehensible is precisely this rigid adherence, the insistence on maintaining them, and the refusal to depart from them.

The correct view is that the best way is the way of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, which he established, commanded, encouraged, and consistently followed. His practice in clothing was to wear whatever was readily available: sometimes wool, sometimes cotton, and sometimes linen.

He wore Yemeni cloaks and a green cloak. He wore robes and coats, shirts and trousers, waist-wrappers and upper-body wraps, leather socks and sandals. Sometimes he let the tail of his turban hang down behind him, and sometimes he did not. He would wrap part of his turban under his chin.

When he put on a new garment, he would name it and say:

“O Allah, You have clothed me in this shirt—or cloak or turban. I ask You for its good and the good of that for which it was made, and I seek refuge in You from its evil and the evil of that for which it was made.” (2)