—contradicting the Companions and their Followers, showing irreverence toward the verses of Allah Most High, and distorting the revealed words—really applies to him? And that what he has ascribed with absolute certainty to Ibn ʿAbbās is a lie against that Companion? Indeed, I count myself among the people most eager to follow Ibn ʿAbbās—may Allah be pleased with him—in the sounder report he transmitted regarding this noble verse and others, as will appear when I discuss the phrase, “except what is outward” (p. 102).

Once it is clear that the hadith attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās commanding women to cover their faces save one eye is weak, and that the other narration from him—which states explicitly that she is to draw the jilbāb tightly over her forehead—is stronger, because of its corroborating chains, its agreement with the Arabic sense of idnāʾ (lowering), and with his own exegesis, the esteemed reader will grasp a bitter and regrettable truth: Shaykh al-Tuwayjiri has established for those who write on this subject an evil precedent—namely, citing unauthentic hadiths while knowing their weakness and the defects I have laid bare in my book (see p. 73), and refusing to address them or mention the evidence that contradicts them. Thus the Prophet’s words, ﷺ, which he places at the end of his book (p. 249) in the wrong context, apply to him and he has wronged me thereby: “…Whoever introduces an evil practice in Islam will bear its sin and the sin of all who act upon it until the Day of Resurrection…” and so forth.

Most of those who agree with him have blindly followed his lead in adducing this feeble hadith and remaining silent about its flaws. Among them is one whose reliance on it in his “Risālat al-Ḥijāb” (p. 12) has pained me, for I assumed he was someone who verifies sound sunnah, especially in matters where scholars differ—so how ⦗53⦘