that a woman in the state of iḥrām is exempt from covering her face? If you say so—indeed, you declared it plainly (p. 97)—then you have brought forward a novel claim that departs from the way of the believers. We do not know of a single scholar who has ever said that, as a general rule, the face must be covered while simultaneously exempting the woman in iḥrām, even when temptation is feared. Had your followers not felt cornered, they would not have resorted to a host of strained answers to escape the evident purport of the ḥadīth that nullifies their assertion of obligation. The refutation of those answers has already been set out on pages 41–43 and 135–136.

Besides contradicting all the scholars, he has again contradicted himself: on page 81 he categorically affirms that a female slave is required to veil her face if she fears temptation, “to block the means,” even though his basic premise is that she is not required to do so. Yet here he does not declare it obligatory for the free woman when the fear is actually present—though, according to his own principle, it is binding upon her. Is this not the fickleness in the religion of Allah that Abū Masʿūd al-Anṣārī, may Allah be pleased with him, forbade? (1) All of this is nothing but an attempt to wriggle free of the clear indication of the ḥadīth, on which the major scholars have relied up to our own day, as has already been demonstrated. Allah’s help is sought.

In summary: temptation involving women existed in the very era when revelation was descending upon the Prophet ﷺ. For that reason Allah prescribed, for both sexes and as a safeguard, the rulings already alluded to. Had Allah wished to oblige women to cover their faces in front of unrelated men, He would have done so as a further measure to block the means (and it would not…)