the ordinary ranks of Ahl al-Sunnah, “Whose face does a clean-shaven man resemble?” he would answer, “A woman’s face, a child’s face, and the face of a Jew or a Christian.” The scholars have described this sort of resemblance with the term takhannuth (effeminacy).

Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, the Ḥāfiẓ of the Maghrib, said: “Shaving the beard is unlawful, and none but effeminate men do it.”

Two cautions:

1. Just as a man who dyes his fingertips with henna is deemed to be imitating women—even if he sports a beard, a moustache, and a turban—so too a man who shaves his beard is imitating women, even if he keeps a moustache, wears a shirt, and wraps a turban.

2. Imitation (tashabbuh) is an act whose legal character is not dependent on one’s intention, just like destroying property, killing, or striking: whoever carries it out is deemed to have done so even if he never meant it. The harm that results from imitation remains, whether or not the person intended it. For that reason the Prophet ﷺ forbade certain actions whose doers never imagined they were imitating anyone—such as the prohibition of praying at sunrise and at the time when the shadow shrinks