The invalidity of the consensus he claimed:
I say—and in Allah alone I seek help:
No scholar, to the best of my knowledge, has ever used the word “consensus” (ijmāʿ) in this issue except this shaykh. What drove him to that was only his severity, his partisanship for his own view, and his closing his eyes to every text that contradicts it. The disagreement on the matter is ancient; scarcely a book devoted to juristic disputation is free from it. Had time allowed, I would have written a separate treatise refuting as many of their statements on this subject as I could. For now, however, I must cite a few passages that demonstrate the baselessness of the consensus he alleged. I say:

First: Ibn Ḥazm says in his Marātib al-Ijmāʿ (p. 29):
‘They agree that the hair and body of a free woman, apart from her face and her hands, constitute nakedness (ʿawrah). They differed about the face and the hands—even the fingernails—whether they are nakedness or not.’
Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah approved this statement in his marginal notes and did not contest it, as he did in some other places.

Second: Ibn Hubayrah al-Ḥanbalī says in al-Ifṣāḥ (1/118, Aleppo edition):
‘They differed about the ʿawrah of a free woman when she is alone. Abū Ḥanīfah said: all of her is ʿawrah except the face, the hands, and the feet; another report from him counts the feet as ʿawrah. Mālik
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and al-Shāfiʿī said: all of her is ʿawrah except the face and the hands. This is also the position of Aḥmad in one of the two reports from him; the other report holds that all of her is ʿawrah except only her face. The latter is the famous report and was chosen by al-Khirqī.’
He overlooked a third report, namely that every part of her, even the fingernail, is ʿawrah, as will soon be shown together with Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr’s rebuttal of it.

Third: In Al-Fiqh ʿalā al-Madhāhib al-Arbaʿah, compiled by a committee of scholars that included al-Jazīrī, under the discussion of a woman’s ʿawrah (1/167, second edition), we read:
‘If she is in the presence of a non-maḥram man or a non-Muslim woman, her ʿawrah is her entire body except the face and the hands, for these are not ʿawrah (1) and it is therefore permissible to look at them when no temptation is feared.’
The authors then except the Shāfiʿī school from this ruling, but that exception is plainly questionable in light of what has been cited from al-Ifṣāḥ and other works, as has been mentioned and will be shown.

Fourth: Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr says in al-Tamḥīd (6/364)—after stating that a woman is entirely ʿawrah except for the face and the hands, and that this is the view of the leading imams and their disciples, as well as of al-Awzāʿī and Abū Thawr—
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