“…Al-Albani’s exposition of the verse in Sūrat al-Aḥzāb is unprecedented; none of the Companions or Successors ever advanced it. It conflicts with what has been reported from the Scholar of the Ummah and other leading Successors in their commentary on the verse. Therefore, it amounts to heresy toward the verses of Allah Most High and a distortion of the revealed words….” ⦗48⦘

Such were his words—may Allah guide him. I respond only with the divine instruction: “Whether we or you are upon right guidance or in manifest error” (Qur’an 34:24). Nevertheless, I shall prove to every fair-minded reader that the Shaykh’s accusation will recoil upon him, just as the Prophet ﷺ said in the rigorously authentic hadith:

(Sound) “Whoever calls a man an unbeliever, or says, ‘Enemy of Allah,’ when that is not the case, it rebounds upon him.”

And as the popular proverb goes: “She blamed me for her own illness and then slipped away.”

The fact is that there is another narration from Ibn ʿAbbās—in the very source from which the Shaykh cited the first report, al-Durr al-Manthūr—that he and his followers have suppressed because it clashes with their desires. Its wording, concerning the verse of idnāʾ, is: “Idnāʾ of the jilbāb (outer cloak) means that she draws it over and fastens it around her forehead.” It was transmitted by Ibn Jarīr and Ibn Mardawayh.

This is exactly our view, and Ibn Jarīr (22/33) records it under the heading:

“Others said: Rather, they were commanded to tighten their jilbābs over their foreheads.”

Although its chain of transmission is weak, it is weightier than the first for several reasons: