It has settled in your mind that the Qur’anic verse is unrestricted and that the ḥadith cannot serve to qualify it. In both matters you are swayed by blind imitation and a lack of sound research. As for the ḥadith, we have already demonstrated beyond doubt that it is authentic.

With respect to the verse, you yourself laid bare your mistake when you said (p. 378):

“The command to lower the gaze is unconditional and therefore covers everything from which one ought to avert one’s eyes….”

Your claim that it is “unconditional” is wrong and led you to reject this sound ḥadith, for it contradicts the understanding of the exegetes—such as Ibn Jarīr, al-Qurṭubī, and Ibn Kathīr—who have said, in the wording of Ibn Kathīr:

“This is a command from Allah, Exalted be He, to His believing servants that they lower their gazes from what He has forbidden them and look only at that which He has allowed them to look at….”

The verse therefore contains both things that are forbidden to look at and things that are permitted, for men and women alike. Your claim of absolute generality is thus refuted—especially since you built upon it either a rejection of this authentic ḥadith or an emptying of its meaning with the pickaxe of contrived interpretation by which you have demolished conclusive proofs, particularly when those proofs are Prophetic aḥādīth. You and your follower did so with the ḥadith of the Khathʿamite woman and others (see the Sixth Discussion, pp. 41–44) and with the ḥadith of Fāṭimah bint Qays (pp. 46–47). Others who run after him without any study or verification—such as Ibn Khalf and the like—have merely repeated the same, and then you relayed it. ⦗112⦘