women.’ He also ordered the banishment of effeminate men. Al-Shāfiʿī, Ahmad, and others explicitly prescribed their banishment, saying: ‘The Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, prescribes banishment as part of the prescribed punishment for unlawful sexual intercourse, and the banishment of effeminate men.’

In Sahīh Muslim, he is reported to have said:

‘There are two kinds of people of the Fire from my community whom I have not yet seen: women who are clothed yet naked, swaying and causing others to sway, with what look like the humps of Bactrian camels on their heads. They will neither enter Paradise nor smell its fragrance. And men carrying whips like cows’ tails, with which they beat Allah’s servants.’

The Sunan collections report that he

‘passed by Umm Salama’s door while she was wrapping her head, and said: “Umm Salama, one wrap, not two.”’

His words ‘clothed yet naked’ have been explained as referring to a woman who wears something that does not conceal her: she is clothed, yet in reality naked. Examples include a woman wearing a thin garment through which her skin shows, or a tight garment that reveals the contours of her body, such as her buttocks, forearm, and the like. A woman’s clothing is truly clothing only when it conceals her, revealing neither her body nor the shape of its parts, because it is thick and loose.

From this, the criterion governing his prohibition—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—of men imitating women and women imitating men becomes clear. Its basis does not lie merely in what men and women choose, desire, and habitually wear. For if that were so, then if a people agreed that men should wear head-coverings that