and her husband was under her sway. Yet Joseph chose humiliation, imprisonment, abstaining from desire, and forgoing wealth and authority in obedience to Allah over honor, authority, wealth, and the gratification of desire in disobedience to Him. Rather, he put fear of the Creator before fear of any created being, even if that person harmed him through imprisonment and false accusations. She did indeed lie about him, claiming that he had tried to seduce her, and then had him imprisoned.

It has been said that she told her husband, “He has dishonored me.” She could not tell him, “He tried to seduce me,” because her husband already knew what had happened. Instead, she fabricated an accusation against Joseph that her husband would believe: that he had dishonored her by publicizing her conduct. This was a lie against Joseph, for he had said nothing about her. She lied both at the outset and afterward: she falsely accused him of soliciting indecency, then falsely accused him of publicizing it. Yet she herself had solicited it and made it public, for she said to the women:

“This is the one you blamed me for. I did try to seduce him, but he firmly resisted.”

This was the utmost publicity for her own indecency; she did not conceal her conduct. Women are the most given to spreading reports of such things, and even before hearing her words, they had already said in the city:

“The wife of al-‘Azīz is trying to seduce her young servant.”

How much more so, then, once she had admitted it and sought to have their blame lifted from her?