address certain individuals who have taken this book of mine—or, more precisely, my assertion that a woman’s face and hands are not part of the ʿawrah—with unscientific criticism tinged with vilification, as though I were defending this opinion out of personal whim and had no predecessors whatsoever! I therefore set about examining their evidences and rejoinders, tracing their statements and objections one by one. I also paid special attention to refuting Shaykh al-Tuwayjirī in his book Al-Ṣārim al-Mashhūr, for he is their chief spokesman and among the earliest of them. At other times I responded to them in a more general way, whenever the proof was clear and free of ambiguity.

In this fashion I eventually amassed more than a hundred large handwritten pages; had I completed and typeset them, their size would have equalled—or even exceeded—that of this original work. For several reasons, then, it was inappropriate to append all of that under the heading “Preface to the New Edition.” Chief among those reasons is that it would have doubled the book’s length, and—more importantly—the discussions it contains are highly specialized and rare. After reflection I decided to separate what I had written from this preface and publish it as an independent volume, so that it might serve as a clear statement for people and, God willing, prove more beneficial and easier to circulate. I entitled it:

“A Decisive Refutation of Those Who Contradict the Scholars, Adopt Excess and Bigotry, Oblige the Woman to Cover Her Face and Hands and Declare It Mandatory, and Refuse to Accept the Scholars’ View That It Is Sunnah and Merely Recommended.”

Nevertheless, it seems necessary here to list—briefly, as far as possible—the most important errors of these excessively strict objectors. I say:

First: They interpret the phrase ‘to draw near’ (al-idnāʾ) in the forthcoming verse about the jilbāb as meaning to cover the face, whereas