not to mention the many other scholars—early, later, and right up to our own day—who have continued to maintain that it is permissible to look at a woman’s face and hands so long as the onlooker is safe from temptation. I have just listed their views (pp. 119–121); whoever wishes to recall them may turn back to those pages. All of those statements converge on one point: men must avert their gaze from women’s faces whenever they fear fitnah. How ignorant, then, is that author who claimed the imams agreed that a woman must cover her face lest men be led astray—when among those very imams, living in the sixth century AH and after, were Qadi ʿIyad, al-Nawawi, Ibn Mufliḥ, and al-Shawkani, all of whom, as we have seen, said:

1. A woman is not obliged to veil her face while walking on the road;
2. Nor should anyone censure them if they uncover their faces in the street.

It is as though that author—and others of his ilk among the blind imitators, such as al-Sabuni, al-Ghawji, and those like them—imagine that temptation was absent in those centuries, and that Allah, exalted is He, did not place safeguards and barriers before it by prescribing hijab for women and by commanding both sexes to lower their gaze, saying: “That is purer for your hearts and theirs” (al-Ahzab 53). They forget that human nature is the same in every age, as the Quran says: “Beautified for people is the love of desires—for women and children…” (Al ʿImran 14). What truly distinguishes people is their piety and their compliance with Allah’s rulings, as illustrated by the story of al-Fadl ibn ʿAbbas, may Allah be pleased with them both, with⦗135⦘