The Shaykh’s response to those who forbid a woman from uncovering her face when she goes out wearing a jilbab.

The Shaykh: ... And if this sometimes leads to consequences, as has reached us, and I am currently in the process of including in the introduction to my book *The Hijab of the Muslim Woman* a story that serves as a lesson, because you know that the Saudis are strict regarding the face of the woman; they say it is forbidden for her to uncover her face. We, by our conduct and I fear by our speech, say: It is forbidden for you to forbid what Allah has not forbidden. It is sufficient for you to say that it is the best and most pious, as we mentioned in my book *The Hijab of the Muslim Woman*. They philosophize their opinion, and this makes me feel that they have no legitimate evidence in their claim that it is forbidden for a woman to uncover her face when she leaves her house, even if she is wearing the Shari'ah-compliant jilbab. This face is forbidden for them to be shown by the woman; it appears to one who studies their evidence that they feel their evidence is not sufficient and has no proof, or contains no proof; and therefore they resort to opinion and what resembles philosophy. They say it is not reasonable that the Shari'ah would permit a woman to uncover her face, and the most beautiful thing about a woman is her face. We answer them with this same logic, and we do not resort to it except out of necessity, from the perspective of the saying: The wall said to the nail, "Why do you pierce me?" It said, "Ask the one who hammers me." They philosophize to justify their opinion when they failed to provide evidence for it from the Shari'ah. They said it is not reasonable that the Shari'ah would permit a woman to uncover her face, and the most beautiful thing about a woman is her face. So we said, the most beautiful thing about a woman is her eyes. If you blind them and do not permit her to see the road with her eyes, and they almost did that, I used to think so when they interpreted the saying of Allah the Exalted: They said, regarding Ibn 'Abbas, they claimed one eye, not two eyes, one eye. They did not permit her two eyes, they permitted her one eye. I used to be surprised how they permit one eye, and the eye is part of the face, which is the most beautiful part of the face. And then I finally found the most astonishing of all, which is their statement that the entire face is 'awrah, even the one eye. The point is, we said to them, if you forbid and prohibit the woman from seeing the road, even with her one eye, until we found them saying, if she does not need to see the road, then it is not permissible for her to uncover even one eye. The final step, we said, it is upon you to prevent men from uncovering their faces before women with the same philosophy, because just as the most beautiful thing about women is the face, the most beautiful thing about men is also the face. And you say—and you are right in what you say—just as it is not permissible for a man to look at the face of a woman, so it is not permissible for a woman to look at the face of a man, even though they know that the face of a man is not 'awrah for the woman... From the prohibition of looking at something is that it is 'awrah. They said that the face of the woman is 'awrah. Why? Because it is not permissible for the man to look at it. So we said to them, then say that the face of the man is also 'awrah, because it is not permissible in your view for the woman to look at the face of the man. Then the crux of the matter is what came after, until the following story reached us, which is that a woman fromThe student : the tribe fell in love with the professor of her subject through the television. She did not see him face-to-face, but only through the TV. So even this medium you have adopted must be forbidden, because the woman looked at the man...