What is your opinion regarding the hadith of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) that a woman is an awrah?

The questioner : There are several questions here before this, but if one were to use the hadith in al-Tirmidhi as evidence in the issue of hijab, where he (peace and blessings be upon him) said: and it was said: "In the wording, there is a general statement that has no specific exception"; what is the response?

The Shaykh : The response is what you heard just now; the first person to use it as evidence is the one who refutes it. Did you understand me?

The questioner : How do you mean?

The Shaykh : Be straightforward, like our Egyptian friend here.

Another questioner : May Allah reward you.

The Shaykh : I say, and I repeat what I said: the one who uses this general statement as evidence is the first one to refute it.

The questioner : How?

The Shaykh : You heard just now; if a woman leaves her house to go to her sister and walks along the road, especially if you remember the old, rough roads that Ibn Umm Maktum mentioned when he came to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and said: "O Messenger of Allah, I am blind, and on my path are trees and stones," to the end of the hadith. If you remember this road, stay with me, do not be with the paper, and peace be upon you, and Allah's mercy and blessings. Pay attention to the people there in the open; there is no harm if you knock, okay. If we imagine how the old roads were, how can a woman go out based on this general concept of the hadith: ? In reality, if any of you remembers one of my lectures where I rambled about "if a general text is not acted upon in all its parts, then it is not permissible to act upon any part of it if it has not been acted upon," were you present or not?

The questioner : ... .

The Shaykh : Yes?

The questioner : In the past.

The Shaykh : Long ago, very good. So now, this indicates by its general meaning that the face is an awrah. Okay, with what do you cover it? The discussion just now was that either you cover it with the jilbab, which means blinding her to the road, and that is why we said what we said. Either she is permitted to leave one eye open, and some permitted two eyes, or she puts on a handkerchief, or she wears the niqab. But none of this came in the Book or the Sunnah beyond the jilbab. The hadith of the niqab indicates that it occurred; we do not deny this, and we said just now that this is the best. So, some of the ignorant students of knowledge in the present era, who climbed up on knowledge and transgressed against it greatly, when they wrote, what did they call it? I think "The Essence in the Obligatoriness of the Niqab." One of the students in Egypt wrote this thesis with this title, poor thing! Where is the obligatoriness of the niqab in the Book? The Book only obligates the jilbab. If you say that the niqab is also obligatory, you have added to the Book. The Hanafi scholars—and I am not with them, though I was one of them in the past—say: it is not permissible to add to the text of the Book except with a mutawatir hadith; because one does not add to a text whose authenticity is certain and whose meaning is certain except with another text whose authenticity is certain and whose meaning is certain. Where is this text that indicates that it is obligatory for a woman to wear the niqab?
Look at the hadith: , and this is a deviation and poor jurisprudence. They used it as evidence for the obligation of the niqab. The hadith is not in this chapter; the hadith addresses a practical situation. What is the practical situation? That the women of the Arabs in the pre-Islamic age of ignorance were of good morals; jealousy, honor, and so on. So the women wore the niqab, but this wearing of the niqab extended with them to Hajj and 'Umrah. So he (peace be upon him) said: . The implication of this text: is a prohibition and forbidding of the niqab for the woman in a state of ihram. Its implication is that it is not forbidden for other than the woman in a state of ihram. How can they use the hadith as evidence that the niqab is obligatory? This is great ignorance! So, if you know what has passed, you know my answer mentioned just now; which is that those who use this hadith by its generality are the first to refute it; because they know for certain that the hijab mentioned in the verse cannot be lowered over the face as Lady Aisha did, if the hadith about her is authentic, or the report about her; because she was riding on a howdah, and the camel walks in its planned path. It is true that it is an animal, but it knows its path. But when the woman is like many of the non-Arab Sudanese—pardon me—African women, and so on, who walk as you see, the road is difficult to walk to the sacred sites! What do these women do? They must wear the jilbab, but this jilbab does not allow the woman wearing it to cover her eyes at all, otherwise the road would be blinded to her, because my previous statement is clear to you: the first to contradict this generality are those who use it as evidence. Is that clear?

The questioner : Is that clear?