—that very principle of interpreting the Qur’an by the Sunnah—he flouted it and set the hadith aside.

His dismissal of the hadith took two forms:

First, he assumed the report to be sound, and in fact it is sound according to the scholars familiar with its transmission chains and corroborating narrations, as we established in the eighth section of this study with documentation unrivaled in any other book. All praise belongs to Allah, first and last.

Second, he re-interpreted the hadith; yet recourse to figurative interpretation of a scriptural text is permissible only when reconciliation proves impossible, and that is not the case here. The scholars—regardless of their disciplines and legal schools—have agreed to harmonize the texts by restricting the unrestricted or qualifying the general with the specific, as al-Qurtubi reported, or by invoking the rule “the lesser is excepted from the greater,” as Ibn Ḥazm states. Al-Shawkani likewise inclined to this view in Nayl al-Awtar, as already quoted (pp. 27–28).

Now, as promised, I shall gather the statements of the earlier scholars who explicitly affirmed what this sound hadith indicates: that a woman may uncover her face and hands and that men may look at them provided there is no desire or suspicion. This will make plain to respected readers that some opposing shaykhs adopt an unduly harsh stance, conceal the juristic realities from their followers, and lead them to believe that scholarly consensus lies in the opposite direction. I shall note the dates of death of these scholars so that it becomes clear how this opinion has persisted to our own day, just as its practice has endured—reminding once again that the sole purpose here is to clarify⦗118⦘