I say: This is exactly what that Ḥanbalī imām, who died in 763 AH, declared six centuries ago, following the earlier scholars whom I, too, have emulated. Do the shaykh and those whom he has misled—may Allah guide them—not realize that they are subject to the very censure he directed at me at the end of his book, where he wrote:
“Whoever allows women to go unveiled and bases his view on the same proof adduced by al-Albānī has thrown the doors of wanton display wide open.”
—and the rest of his drivel; may Allah guide him.

Sixth Issue: Their neutralizing of authentic hadiths that contradict their position.

Many hadiths mention women uncovering their faces and hands—as will be detailed later in this book—so many that, according to the scholars, they amount to recurrent mass transmission in meaning. Unsurprisingly, the majority of jurists acted upon them. Yet the blindly partisan imitators have taken up the tools of demolition against these reports: twisting their wording, suspending their force, and nullifying their clear, manifest indications—just as they did with the statements of the imāms, as you have already seen. Space here does not permit a discussion of every one of their interpretations; they are so numerous that a separate treatise would be needed merely to list the hadiths, cite their explanations, and then refute them. At the very least, I shall present a few representative examples, which will suffice for the fair-minded reader.

First ḥadith—second in this book (pp. 61–62): the report of the Khathʿamī woman, in which it is stated that she was beautiful and radiant, and it says: “Al-Faḍl kept looking at her, being struck by her beauty.” ⦗41⦘