What is the ruling on opening beauty salons for women?

Mashhur: There are some beauty salons for women run by those whom Allah the Mighty and Majestic has guided toward Islam. For example, they refuse to do plucking of the eyebrows, but they do everything else within the circle of what they believe in their hearts is permissible, such as hair styling, facial adornment, and the like. There are also some committed women who go to such salons. Is this work prescribed, and is earning from it lawful?

The Shaykh : No, it is not lawful. Listen, O Shaykh, it is not prescribed for several reasons. First, opening these salons is imitating the disbelievers. That is the first point. Second, every person who has a business must be a jurist in the limits of his work so that he does not fall into a violation of the Shari'ah, especially if the work is among newly invented matters. If it is among newly invented matters, like these beauty salons, and you said—and your words expressed the reality—that it occurs in their hearts, that is Sufi talk. In the speech of the Sufis, there are things... they imagine to be from the inspiration of the sky, but it is from the inspiration of the jinn or humans, or both together. If they had permitted the original matter, which is opening the salon for that committed woman, we would have said to her: it is obligatory for her to be a jurist in this new profession. But there is no way for her to do so, because there is no specialized book explaining everything related to one who practices this profession in her salon.
Mashhur: She is asking, and she asks a lot?

The Shaykh : I wanted to say, but this can be achieved by asking a lot of questions. We are seeing that the youth are able to obtain answers to every question that circles in their minds, let alone women. Then, what reaches me is that many committed women, as you hinted or indicated, fall into some violations based on some opinions that reach them from some jurists, if not the contemporary jurists. It is assumed of every student of knowledge to distinguish between the jurist and the one who has studied jurisprudence, and between the jurist who receives jurisprudence from its two pure sources, the Book and the Sunnah, plus the methodology of the Salaf al-Salih, as we always emphasize this addition, and those jurists who follow the four schools of jurisprudence and take from them, in my opinion, what suits their desires and what they think suits the public benefit, they claim. And I believe you know, like me, if Allah wills, and better than that, that one who has not lived in the light of the Book and the Sunnah is never able to know the public benefit that conforms to the Book and the Sunnah and what contradicts it. Therefore, these people are actually following their desires. And I know about some of these contemporary jurists that I am permitted to say they play on both sides. If their desire is in a certain issue and they are asked, "Where is the proof from the Book of Allah and the hadith of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him)?" he says to you, "My brother, the preponderance of opinion is sufficient." This is a correct answer if he is sincere that it has become clear to him scientifically that the issue in question has such a perspective. But the perspective is such. But you find him in another place in a jurisprudential issue where the majority of scholars are of one opinion, and there are hadiths, indeed multiple hadiths, supporting the view of these scholars. He says to you, "The issue is speculative, there is no definitive proof." Once like this and once like that, "The opinion is sufficient here, the opinion is sufficient." Even though, from the traditional standpoint, the imams agree on it, and some hadiths are authentic. The point of this agreement is that we say this is not definitive in establishment. And from that, for example, he permits singing and musical instruments, despite the agreement of the four imams on their prohibition and the coming of some authentic hadiths supporting their prohibition. He says there is no definitive proof, and he knows that definitive proof is not required by any scholar of jurisprudence in jurisprudential issues. Rather, some of the later scholars among them require this condition, which is also incorrect. In creedal issues... the proof must be definitive in establishment and definitive in indication. This is philosophical talk, talk of the scholars of logic, which has no basis in Islam at all. This is a topic we have discussed more than once, and there is no room now to delve into it again. The point is that these issues that have occurred today, like the barber shop, the man, let alone the woman, must be a jurist in the rulings of the Shari'ah in light of the Book and the Sunnah. And I do not know a woman, indeed I do not know a man, who opened a barber shop and knows what is permissible and what is not permissible, and he adheres to these rulings.
I once said to some of them, and he had asked me about an issue: "Does sin attach to him for shaving beards?" I said, "Of course, this falls under the general rule, which is the saying of Allah the Exalted: ." He said, "If I refrain from shaving beards." I said to him, "Then close your place, because most of the customers are of the type who shave beards. If you want to specialize only in the prescribed matter, your customers will decrease, and consequently we would say to him: turn to another profession from which you can earn a living. Women in their salons are the same, or worse than that. This is all I have as an answer to the question."