—as well as al-Shawkānī—and the exaggerated stance of some self-styled scholars who reject it outright. They have also brushed aside well-known methodological principles for strengthening a report whose chain is weak; the author lists a number of those principles and illustrates them with several narrations, among them ʿĀʾishah’s statement about a woman in iḥrām: tasdilu ath-thawb ʿalā wajhiha in shāʾat (“she may let the cloth hang over her face if she wishes”). Yet al-Tuwayjirī and those who follow him flatly oppose her!
15- A bitter fact: Shaykh al-Tuwayjirī insists on declaring ʿĀʾishah’s hadith weak, even though it is reinforced by corroborating chains; at the same time he accepts another of her hadiths because it mentions her wearing a face-veil, despite the weakness of its isnād—he deems it acceptable on the strength of a single mursal corroboration in which there is, in fact, a liar!
16- Eighth and last: some later Ḥanafīs have abandoned the position of their own imams while claiming to be mujtahids, only to end up blindly following others! Certain ignorant contemporaries then attributed to those Ḥanafīs statements they never made, and someone with no real knowledge came along and proclaimed: “Hence, nowadays there is no disagreement over the obligation to cover the face in order to avert temptation!” By the same logic, the author retorts, men would likewise be obliged to cover their faces in front of women as a safeguard against temptation!
17- The author’s view: If it were said that a woman must cover her face for fear she might be harmed should she unveil, such an opinion would have a basis in jurisprudence. He closes his previously cited book, The Decisive Refutation…, with the remark that severity and extremism in religion never bring about any good. As an example, he mentions certain young women influenced by al-Tuwayjirī’s directives: when they heard the hadith, lā tantaqibu al-marʾatu al-muḥrimah… (“a woman in the state of pilgrim sanctity must not wear a face-veil…”), they exclaimed, “We will wear it anyway and pay the ransom!” This is a far cry from the women of the early generations—such as Umm Sharik, in whose house guests regularly stayed; the wife of Usayd, who prepared food on her wedding day for the Prophet ﷺ and his Companions; the Anṣārī woman who welcomed him and laid out a mat for him; al-Rubayyiʿ bint Muʿawwidh, who, along with other Anṣārī women, would bring water to the fighters and tend to them; Umm Sulaym, who carried a dagger; and Asmāʾ bint Yazīd, who killed seven Byzantine soldiers with the pole of her tent. Were these women strict, considering the face and hands to be nakedness, as those young girls do today?