Allah Most High also said:

“As for elderly women who no longer hope for marriage, there is no blame on them if they lay aside their outer garments without displaying their adornment. But it is better for them to refrain.”

He thus permitted an elderly woman who no longer hopes to marry to lay aside her outer garments: she need not drape her outer cloak over herself or veil herself. This, however, is an exception among free women, because the harm present in the case of others is absent in hers. Similarly, He made an exception for male attendants who have no sexual desire, allowing women to display their adornment before them, because they lack the desire that gives rise to temptation.

Likewise, if a slave woman is feared to be a source of temptation, she must draw her outer cloak over herself and veil herself. Others must lower their gaze from her, and she must lower hers. Neither the Book nor the Sunnah gives general permission to look at slave women, or for them to go unveiled and display their adornment. Rather, the Quran did not command them to do what it commanded free women to do, and the Sunnah distinguished between them and free women in practice, not through a generally worded statement. The customary practice among the believers was that free women veiled themselves from men, whereas slave women did not.

The Quran made an exception for elderly free women, not requiring them to veil themselves. It also made an exception for certain men—those without sexual desire—not prohibiting women from displaying their hidden adornment before them, because desire is absent in both these groups. There is therefore all the more reason to make an exception for certain slave women: those whose going unveiled and displaying their adornment gives rise to desire and temptation.

And just as, in the case of unmarriageable male relatives—such as their husbands’ sons and the like—who feel desire and infatuation, it is not permissible