“there is no blame upon them for laying aside their garments…” [al-Nūr 60]. He devoted roughly two pages (161-163) to discussing this verse in helpful detail, yet he failed to make clear to his readers what the quotations he brought actually imply when they interpret “their garments” (thiyābahunna) as referring to the jilbāb (outer cloak). Among those quotations are the following:

Abū Ṣāliḥ said, “She removes the jilbāb and stands before a man wearing only a dirʿ (tunic) and a khimār (head-covering).”

Saʿīd ibn Jubayr said, “There is no harm if she takes it off in the presence of a stranger or anyone else, so long as she is still wearing a thick khimār.”

A number of Ḥanbalī scholars and others have stated this explicitly. Ibn al-Jawzī records in Zād al-Masīr (6/63) that Abū Yaʿlā—the Ḥanbalī jurist—said:

“This verse indicates that it is permissible for an elderly woman to uncover her face and hands in front of men.”

Similar wording appears in al-Jassāṣ’s Aḥkām al-Qurʾān (3/334). Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah alluded to the same meaning in his commentary on Sūrat al-Nūr (p. 57), and al-Tuwayjirī (167) himself quotes it as proof. All of this shows that these distinguished scholars, early and late alike, held that the khimār covers only the head, not the face—exactly our position. Anyone who examines some of the Shaykh’s strained replies will realise that he agrees with us in essence, yet he continues to argue, deny, and conceal it. Look, for example, at his answer regarding the ḥadith of Jābir that appears later in this book (p. 60), in which it says: “He saw a woman whose cheeks were dark.” [14]