and an evil path” (al-Isrāʾ 17:32).

Allah has ordained that the unmarried fornicator be lashed one hundred times and expelled from the town for a full year. If, however, the offender had previously married, consummated the marriage, and then committed fornication, he is to be stoned with stones until he dies. All of this is to deter people from falling into this enormity, for it ruins character, religion, and lineage, and it brings about grave diseases whose effects have become evident in our own age, now that fornication has spread—may Allah safeguard us.

Allah has also prohibited everything that leads to fornication or serves as a pretext for it. He therefore forbade a woman to go out displaying her adornment, saying, “And remain in your homes and do not display yourselves with the display of the former ignorance” (al-Aḥzāb 33:33). The best place for a woman is her home; she should not leave it unless need or necessity calls for it, and when she does go out she must do so, as the Messenger ﷺ instructed, plainly—that is, without perfume or adornment.

Likewise, she is commanded—when she does go out—to veil herself from every man who is not her maḥram. The legally prescribed hijab requires the woman to cover everything whose exposure could be a means to temptation, foremost among which is the face, which must be concealed from unrelated men even more emphatically than the head, the arm, or the foot. And no—