Moreover, numerous prophetic traditions found in the sound collections and elsewhere curse women who imitate men and men who imitate women. In another wording he ﷺ cursed effeminate men and masculinised women, and he ordered that the effeminate be banished. Imām al-Shāfiʿī, Imām Aḥmad, and others explicitly ruled for their exile, saying: “The Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ commands banishment as a discretionary punishment for fornication and for effeminates.”

In Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim1 it is related that he ﷺ said:
“Two categories of people from my community are destined for the Fire, though I have not yet seen them: women who are clothed yet naked, swaying and causing others to sway, with heads resembling the humps of Bactrian camels—they will neither enter Paradise nor even smell its fragrance; and men who hold whips like the tails of cattle with which they strike the servants of Allah.”

The expression “clothed yet naked” has been explained as describing a woman who wears a garment that does not cover her. Outwardly she appears clothed, yet in reality she is naked—such as one who dons a sheer fabric that reveals her skin tone, or a tight garment that shows the contours of her figure, like her backside or arms. A woman’s proper covering is only that which conceals her, revealing neither her body nor the shape of her limbs, because it is thick and loose.

From this the governing principle becomes clear concerning his ﷺ prohibition of men resembling women and women resembling men: the matter is not simply a question of what males and females happen to prefer, fancy, or grow accustomed to. For if it were merely that, then whenever a group of people were to agree