and to recall the wise maxim, “Truth is not known through men; know the truth and you will know the men.” Shaykh al-Tuwayjiri, while adamantly rejecting ʿĀʾishah’s ḥadith about lowering the garment—despite the fact that it is supported by several corroborating chains, among them Qatādah’s mursal report—nonetheless accepts another ḥadith ascribed to her in which she is said to have worn a niqāb, and in which she allegedly remarked of Ṣafiyyah and the women of the Anṣār, “A Jewess among Jewesses!” Its chain is likewise defective and its content, as you can see, is extremely objectionable. Yet the shaykh bolsters it with the statement (p. 181), “It has a mursal corroboration,” and then cites the mursal of ʿAṭāʾ—within whose chain there is an outright liar!

Let the readers ponder the vast difference between this fabricated “supporting” report and the sound corroboration for the first ḥadith from Qatādah together with its other supports, and then ask: Why did al-Tuwayjiri accept this ḥadith of ʿĀʾishah yet reject the other?

The answer: because the accepted report mentions face-veiling—though it does not establish it as obligatory—whereas the rejected one negates it. Thus the shaykh’s stance here is not guided by Islamic scholarly principles, but by a maxim akin to the Jewish dictum, “The end justifies the means.” Allah alone is the One whose help is sought.

Eighth and last: One of the strangest things about certain later Ḥanafī imitators—and others—is that, in emulation of their imams, they stand with us against the over-zealous objectors, yet they are quick to side with those same objectors against their own imams! These blind followers ventured to qualify the imams’ position by saying, “Provided there is no fear of temptation,” meaning the temptation of men by women. Then one of the ignorant contemporary imitators went to an even further extreme