in the verse of Sūrat al-Nūr: “and let them not reveal their adornment except to their husbands or their fathers …” until His words, “or their women.” What is meant are the sites of adornment themselves—earring, armlet, anklet, and necklace. This is the unanimous view of the exegetes; it is the position transmitted from Ibn Masʿūd and even cited by Shaykh al-Tuwayjirī in his own book (p. 156).(1)

This Qurʾānic text is explicit: a woman may not show before a Muslim woman more than these particular areas. So does the Shaykh really believe that the verse’s “places of adornment” include her chest, her back, and her waist? By Allah, I am perplexed by this Shaykh who somehow combines opposites in his mind: at one moment he is excessively strict, prohibiting what Allah has allowed—namely a woman’s face and hands—yet at another he is unduly lenient, permitting her to uncover for her Muslim sister what lies above her navel, something Allah has forbidden. Not even some Ḥanafīs—often faulted for relying on opinion—went that far; they did not permit the back or the belly, for these are not places of adornment, as stated in al-Baḥr al-Rāʾiq (8/220). What bewilders me further is that in doing so he also contradicts the narration of Ibn Masʿūd that the exegetes adopt and that the Shaykh himself approves (p. 156), for another report from Ibn Masʿūd actually supports his earlier strictness. Is this ignorance, feigned ignorance, or simply the following of one’s whim?