—differed over what she may intentionally display. Ibn Masʿūd said that it is her garments, meaning her jilbāb (outer cloak). Ibn ʿAbbās, along with the Companions who agreed with him and others, said that it is her face and her two hands. The purport of the verse, then, is: “except what commonly shows with the permission and command of the Lawgiver.”

Consider this: were a woman to lift her jilbāb so that something of the clothes and adornment beneath became visible—as certain fully-veiled Saudi women do—she would, by unanimous agreement of the scholars, be contravening the verse. Her present act thus coincides with her earlier one in that both are deliberate; there is no alternative. Hence, the ruling in the verse does not pivot on whatever appears unintentionally on the woman’s part—for that entails no liability outside the area of dispute by consensus—but rather on what appears without authorization from the Wise Lawgiver. Once it is established that the Law allows a woman to show some of her adornment—whether a hand, a face, or anything else—no objection can be raised on the basis of intent, for it is permitted just as displaying the jilbāb itself is permitted, exactly as I explained a moment ago.

This, then, is the rationale behind the Companions’ exegesis that the exception in the verse refers to the face and the hands, and it accords with the practice of many women in the Prophet’s time ﷺ and afterward, as you will see in the mutawātir texts that follow.

The credit for drawing attention to this explanation—after Allah Most High—goes to the ḥāfiẓ Abū al-Ḥasan ibn al-Qaṭṭān al-Fāsī1, may Allah have mercy on him, in his unique and invaluable work.