for the white garment is superior to others: it shines with brightness and light, and whenever it becomes even slightly dirty the stain immediately shows, so one hastens to wash it. Other clothes, however, may accumulate filth while the wearer remains unaware and therefore does not wash them; and if he does wash them, he cannot be sure they are truly clean. For this reason the Prophet ﷺ said, “It is among your best clothing, so shroud your dead in it.”

This ruling applies to every type of white apparel—shirts, waist-wrappers, and trousers alike; all of them should preferably be white. Yet if a person wears another color, there is no harm, provided the garment is not distinctive to women. Should it be something exclusive to women’s dress, a man may not wear it, for the Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him peace, cursed men who imitate women. A second condition is that the garment not be pure red, for the Prophet ﷺ forbade solid red. If the red is mixed with white, however, there is no objection.

Accordingly, the third hadith the author mentions—stating that the Prophet ﷺ was of medium height and that he wore a red mantle—is to be understood as meaning that the mantle was not wholly red; rather, its stripes were red, just as one might describe a head-scarf as “red” even though it actually contains a large amount of white— but