The Obligatory Conditions for an Islamic Hijab

1) COVERING ALL OF THE BODYThis respected author is in agreement with the position thatthe face and hands of the woman must be covered as he hasdetailed this in discussions of the Hijab issues in his book:"The Return of the Hijab, Part 3". Some scholars say it ispermissible to uncover the face and the hands of the woman aslong as there is no fitna (infatuation) caused by her or inflictedupon her. They see that if: a) she is beautiful and beautifiesher face and hands with external substances, and b) thesociety around her is corrupt where men do not lower theirgaze, then it is prohibited for her to uncover her face and hands.(2) THE HIJAB MUST NOT BE A DISPLAYThe Hijab itself must not be a display. Allah ordained it so asto cover the beauty of women and not for show off. He (THE ALMIGHTY)says:} ‏ وَلَا يُبْدِينَ زِينَتَهُنَّ إِلَّا مَا ظَهَرَ مِنْهَا ‏‏{ الآية [النور،31]"And not to show of their adornmentexcept only that which is apparent."(Qur'an 24: 31)} ‏ وَقَرْنَ فِي بُيُوتِكُنَّ وَلَا تَبَرَّجْنَ تَبَرُّجَ الْجَاهِلِيَّةِ الْأُولَى ‏‏{ [الأحزاب،33]"And stay in your houses and do notdisplay yourselves like that of the timesof ignorance." (Qur'an 33:33)It is not logical that the Hijab itself be a source of display.( 1)ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ(1) Some women put on attractive covers on their heads. This is againstthe purity of the Hijab and its essence.(3) THE HIJAB MUST NOT BE TRANSPARENTThe purpose must be achieved. In order for the Hijab to be acover, it must not be made of transparent material making thewoman covered only by name(!)While in reality she is naked.The Prophet (PBUH) said:"سيَكُونُ في آخِر أُمَّتي نساءٌ كاسِياتٌ عارياتٌ، على رُؤوسِهِنَّ كأسنِمَةِ البُختِ،إلعَنوهُنّ فإنَّهُنَّ ملعُونات""In the latest part of my Omaha (nation of Muslims) thereshall be women who would be naked in spite of being dressed,they have hair high like the humps of the Bukht camel, cursethem, for they are cursed"(2). He (PBUH ) added in anotherhadeeth:" لا يَدْخُلْنَ الجنَّةَ، ولا يَجِدْنَ ريحَها، وإنَّ ريحَها لَيُوجَدُ من مَسيرةِ كَذا وكَذا""They will not enter Aj-Jannah and would not perceive itsodor, although its fragrance can be perceived from such andsuch distance.This indicates that a woman could cause herself a grave anddestructive sin if she puts on a garment that is thin andtransparent and which clearly shapes her body's features.ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ(2) At-Tabarani reported it and Al-Albani in his book "Al-Hijab" said it isauthentic.(4)HIJAB MUST BE ROOMY, FLOWING AND NOT TIGHTThe Hijab is a safeguard against Fitna. If tight, it will bedescriptive of the woman's body and this violates the purposeof Hijab. Usamma Bin Zaid (may Allah be pleased with him) said:"كَساني رسولً الله- صلى الله عليه وسلَّم- قُبطِيَّة كَثيفة مما أهداهَا له دِحيةالكَلبي، فكَسَوتُها امرأتي، فقال "مالكَ لم تَلبِس القُبطيَّة؟" قلت: كَسَوتُها امرأتي،فقال: "مُرها فلَتجعَل تَحتَها غُلالة وهي شِعارٌ يُلبِس تحتَ الثوب فإني أخاف أنتَصِفَ حجمَ عِظامها""The Messenger of Allah (PBUH) dressed me with a thickQubtyeeyah (cotton dress from Egypt) which was a gift thathe received from Duhia Al-Kalbi. So I gave it to my wife towear. He (PBUH) said : "What made you not to wear theQubtyeeyah?" I said: "I dressed my wife with it. " He (PBUH)said: " Order her to put an undergarment (or gown) under it,because I am afraid it may describe the size of her bones.(3)ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ(3) Reported by Ad'Diya' Al-Maqdissi, Imam Ahmed, At-Tabarani, Al-Baihaqi, and Ibin Sa'd. It is also reported that Al-Haithami said:"amongst the chain of narrators is Abdullah Ibin Aqeel whose narrationsare good; yet according to some scholars there is Da'ff (weakness)associated with him, and that the rest of narrators are Thuqat (men ofconfidence regarding reporting). Ad-Dahabi said: " the level of AbdullahIbin Aqeel's narration is not below the rating of "good" (In Meezan Al-I'tidal: Measure of Balanced (verifications); Arabic).(5)THE HIJAB MUST NOT BE PERFUMED WITH INCENSEThe Messenger of Allah (PBUH) said:"إيما امرأةٌ استَعطَرَت، فَمرَّت على قَومٍ لِيَجِدوا ريحها، فهي زانية""Any woman who perfumes herself and passes by some peoplethat they smell her scent, then she is a Zaniyah(prostitute).(4)ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ(4) Narrated by Imam Ahmed, An-Nissa'ee, and Al-Hakim who said: "it hasan authentic chain of narration" and Ad-Dahabi agreed.(6)THE HIJAB SHOULD NOT RESEMBLE MEN'SDRESSThe Messenger of Allah (PBUH) said:"ليسَ مِنَّا من تَشَبَّهَ بالرَّجالِ منَ النَّساءِ، ولا مَن تَشَبَّهَ بالنَّساءِ من الرَّجالِ""Women who assume the manners of men are not from us andalso those of men who assume the manners of women.(5)Abu-Huraira (may Allah be pleased with him) narrated that:"لَعَنَ رسولً الله-صلى الله عليهِ وسلَّم-الرجل يلبس لبسة المرأة والمرأة تَلبَسُ لبسَةالرجل...""The Prophet (PBUH) cursed the man who wears the dress ofa woman and the woman who wears the dress of a man."(6)knowingly condones and facilitates the Zina for his wife."(7)ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ(5) Reported by Imam Ahmed and Abu Na'eem. Al-Albani authenticatedit in his book "Al-Hijab" (PP 66-67).(6) Narrated by Abu Dawoud, Ibin Majah, Al-Hakim, and Imam Ahmed.Al-Hakim said:" it is an authentic hadeeth in accordance with theconditions of (Imam) Muslim," and Ad-Dahabi agreed. It was alsoauthenticated by Imam Al-Nawawee.(7) Narrated by An-Nissa'ee, Imam Ahmed, Ibin Khuzayemah, IbinHab'ban and authenticated by the scholar Ahmed Shakir.(7) THE HIJAB MUST NOT RESEMBLETHE GARMENTS OF THE KUFFARThe Messenger of Allah (PBUH) said:"من تَشَبَّه بِقَومٍ فَهُوَ مِنهُم""The one who takes the similitude (manner) of a certainpeople becomes one of them.(8)Abdullah bin Ummar (may Allah be pleased with him) said:"وعن عبد الله بن عمرو- رضي الله عنهما قال: "رأى رسول الله- صلى الله عليهوسلم- عَليَّ ثوبيَّنِ مُعَصفَرَيْن، فقال: "إنَّ هذه من ثياب الكُفار، فلا تلبسها""The Prophet (PBUH) saw me wearing two clothes dyed insaffron, whereupon he said: these are the clothes (usuallyworn) by the Kuffar, so do not wear them."(9)ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ(8) Narrated by Abu Dawoud, Ahmed (as part of a another hadeeth), IbinTaymeeyah said that the hadeeth has a good chain of narration (i.e. thatreported by Abu Dawoud) and that it is a "good hadeeth"; As-Siyoutisaid :"it is "Hassan: Good" and Ibin Hag'er reported it in "Fath Al-Bari"and supported it with another evidence (a Murssal) with a good chain ofnarration.(9) Saheeh Muslim, V. 3, hadeeth # 5173(8) THE HIJAB IS NOT FOR FAME!The Messenger (PBUH) said:"من لَبِسَ ثَوبَ شُهرةٍ في الدُّنيا ألبَسَهُ اللهُ ثوبَ مَذَلَّةٍ يَومَ القيامة، ثُمَّ ألهَبَ فيهِ ناراً""The one who wears a garment designed for a worldly fame,Allah will make him wear a garment of humility on the Day ofResurrection then he will be set ablaze."(9)The garment of fame is any garment a person wears to makehim/her look famous. This applies whether the garment ishighly precious and shows admiration to the life of this worldor if it is chosen of a low quality to show lack of interest tothis worldly life. The person may put on clothes with distinctcolors so as to draw attention, act proudly and/or arrogantly.ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ(10) Narrated by Abu Dawoud, Ibin Majah, and Al-Munthari said that it ishassan (good) as well as Ibin Muflih. Imam As-Shawkani said: "Thenarrators of the chain are Thuqat" and Al-Alabni reported in his book"Al-Hijab" p. 110 that it is hassan .