—among them his ﷺ saying: “Make things easy and do not make them difficult” 1, and the principles of sound upbringing. All of this obliges the jurists of the ummah, together with its educators and spiritual guides, to treat women with gentleness, to lead them with kindness rather than severity, and to show them forbearance in those matters in which Allah has granted ease—especially in an age when few people observe the stricter rulings even in obligatory matters, let alone in recommended and supererogatory deeds!
If some scholars today hold that a woman’s uncovering of her face—while she veils the rest of her body as Allah has commanded—poses a danger to her, as they claim, then it is unseemly for them to limit their response to strident denunciation of anyone who disagrees with them and to banning the entry of this book into their lands. Instead, they have two duties that they must fulfill:
First: to set forth for the public the ruling of Allah on the issue, supporting it with evidence from the Quran and the Sunnah, not by blind imitation of a legal school or by clinging to local customs. Only thus will people see the difference between right and wrong, indeed between truth and falsehood: “As for the scum, it drifts away as dross, but what benefits people remains on the earth” (Q 13:17). If they do this, believing women will respond—will they do so?
Second: to dedicate themselves to giving Muslim girls a sound Islamic education—especially in schools, mosques, and universities—by teaching them beneficial religious knowledge, preventing indecent magazines from reaching them and corrupting their morals, and by using such contemporary means as ena