Speaking about imitating the disbelievers.

The Shaykh : I mentioned earlier that this principle, namely ... to confirm it and apply it. Among the things that came with a ruling explained by such a principle, which is imitating, for example ... The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said This is a legal ruling If the hadith ended here, it would be sufficient to establish this ruling, which is the permissibility of praying in sandals and in leather socks. But the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), by revelation from Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He), added to this command a legal cause to establish that principle, which is the prohibition of imitating the disbelievers. He said Why do we command us to pray in sandals and in leather socks? Because the Jews are strict in their religion and they consider it impermissible for them to stand in their prayer wearing sandals. Therefore, it came in some reports from the Salaf that Ibn Mas'ud (may Allah be pleased with him) was in a gathering and the prayer was established. Among the people was Abu Musa al-Ash'ari, who was one of those who had the elevated voice in the beautiful recitation of the Noble Qur'an. It is reported regarding him that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) went around his companions one night with his wife Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her), and they stopped at Abu Musa while he was reciting the Qur'an. He listened to him and paid attention to him, and he (peace be upon him) said When morning came, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) informed him that he had passed by him last night and praised his recitation and reading. He said, "O Messenger of Allah, if I had known that, I would have prepared it for you with great care." This noble Companion was in the gathering of Ibn Mas'ud. When the prayer time arrived, he presented him to lead the people as imam. What Abu Musa (may Allah be pleased with them both) did was that he took off his sandals. Ibn Mas'ud disapproved of that for him and said, "Are you in the Sacred Valley?" He is indicating that this is a Jewish practice. A noble Companion objects to a Companion like him and says, why did you take off your sandals? Allah said to Musa when he was in the Sacred Valley Are you in the Sacred Valley? Of course, he is indicating by this disapproval, or the rhetorical question as the grammarians call it, to two things. I mentioned one of them earlier, which is his (peace be upon him) saying The second is that it was among the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) that he would pray in his sandals, so he does not make a difficult effort. It is as if he is saying to Abu Musa, the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) did not make the difficult effort that you are making. The meaning of this ruling is that if a Muslim is present for prayer in a place and he is wearing sandals or leather socks, he should not make a difficult effort to remove them, but he prays as he is. Likewise, the opposite is not permissible, meaning that he is barefoot and when he wants to stand for prayer, he puts on sandals. Some of the extremists in adhering to the Sunnah do this to spite those who fight the Sunnah. Incidents have occurred in the Prophet's Mosque, and even in the Makkah Mosque, where some enthusiastic young men would enter the mosque in their sandals. You know that the mosque is carpeted with expensive carpets, so they were causing a fitnah that they were in no need of causing. The point is that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, confirming the principle This is a branch of the branches built on the principle mentioned earlier. Among them is also his (peace and blessings be upon him) saying Meaning, if a Jew or a Christian grows old, he leaves his gray hair white. So the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) commanded, to confirm that principle, that the Muslim should differ from the disbeliever, and he said, "Dye your hair" And so the branches and legal rulings built on this principle multiply. I had collected much of the good of them in my book "The Hijab of the Muslim Woman" in many chapters of the Shari'ah. In my opinion, or in my memory, they exceeded forty legal rulings, all of which fall under the chapter of "Differ from the Jews and the Christians." Among the last of these is what the masses of Muslims, especially before this good awakening, if Allah wills, were afflicted with. When they were colonized by the disbelievers, the British, we return to what we were saying. When many Islamic lands were colonized by the disbelievers, the British, or the French, or the Dutch, or the Belgians, or others, they brought to the lands they colonized many of their customs and clothes. From that day, things spread among the Muslims—may Allah have mercy on you—things they did not know before. And their masses were living on the customs and traditions they inherited from their fathers and grandfathers. For example, there was no one among the Muslims before who dared to walk with his head uncovered in the streets. This is because this uncovering is contrary to the custom of all Muslims. Therefore, some fatwas were issued, among them that the one who walks with his head uncovered in the streets—and no offense to some of the present, because we are first narrating a ruling that was issued based on that old custom, which is an Islamic custom without doubt—they used to say that this one who walks in the streets with his head uncovered has lost his honor, and it follows from that that his testimony is not accepted. The matter is not easy. And who is it whose testimony is not accepted? This is equivalent to the open sinner. The open sinner is the one whose testimony is not accepted, and the open sinner is the one who declares the sin and makes it public, does not fear Allah, and does not feel shy of the servants of Allah. So they lowered some Islamic customs to the level of the sin that contradicts the Shari'ah, among them this uncovering, walking with the head exposed, because this disrupts the general Islamic custom. A fortiori, the Muslims did not know before a man who shaves his beard, because this matter is much more dangerous than uncovering the head. Covering the head is an Islamic etiquette, an Islamic custom, but there is no command for it in the Sunnah, let alone the Book. However, the Muslims inherited, generation after generation, to walk in the streets with their heads covered. As for shaving the beard, there are many matters that confirm to every Muslim who is zealous for his religion and eager to follow—not I say the Sunnah of his Prophet, but I say eager to follow the command of his Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him)—because the command from him is higher in the legal rulings than the mere practical Sunnah by which the practice of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was established. So shaving the beard has many violations. The first of them is the violation of the explicit text that came in "the two Sahihs" that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said Differ from the Jews and the Christians. From the individuals of the Muslim, and the important thing is that the one who shaves violates this noble Prophetic command. This is the first violation for the one who shaves his beard, where he violates an explicit text that does not accept debate and does not accept interpretation. A second violation, which is very serious, where Abdullah ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him) said, as in "Sahih al-Bukhari" And glory to Allah, if a woman put a false beard on her cheeks in the manner of the British lords, whose tradition it is that when they enter parliament, they must ...

The questioner : Peace be upon you.

The Shaykh : And upon you be peace and the mercy of Allah and His blessings. They must put on their faces not the beard that they threw on the ground, but a false beard like a wig, and they put it on and perform the session while it is on them. Then when they go out, they throw it away. If a woman did what these British men do, no man would hesitate in saying that this woman imitated the man because she put on a false beard, and this is a matter that is not open to discussion. So I do not know why the men were negligent about their imitating the women when the reality of their matter is that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) distinguished them from the women by creating for them a beard. They have no will in this creation. Allah (Mighty and Majestic) created them as men with beards and created the other sex as women without beards ...

The questioner : Peace be upon you.

The Shaykh : And upon you be peace, and the mercy of Allah and His blessings. The matter is as Allah the Exalted said: And He, Mighty and Majestic, said: When each of the two sexes thinks of himself or herself, seeing himself as a male or herself as a female, one feels the necessity of this reality for the truth of the noble verse: And as He said: If the matter is thus, is it not a form of defiance against Allah and His Messenger for this man, whom Allah created as a man with a beard, to shave it off and throw it to the ground? Does that not mean that his inner state is saying, "My Lord, You created me, but You did not create me well!"? For if he thought that Allah had not created him as a man and had not given him a beard, he would have said what was reported from the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) when he used to supplicate, saying: In a narration by Dhab'ibah, it is reported that he used to say this when he was admiring himself in the mirror. The inner state of the beardless men afflicted today is, without a doubt, the exact opposite of this. They stand before the mirror with a razor in their hand; it is not necessary for us to hear their words, we can read their inner state when they shave it off like that before the mirror. Their inner state says, "You created me, O my Lord, with a beard, but You did not create me well." So he throws it to the ground. The truth is that this is one of the great sins, for it contains defiance, opposition, and stubbornness against that in which they have no choice. We said that Allah, Mighty and Majestic, said: This is a male and that is a female. So if a woman comes and imitates the man, she has contradicted the divine will, the cosmic will, and the reverse is exactly the same. Indeed, it is more fitting for the man to come to this beard with which Allah, Mighty and Majestic, adorned him and throw it to the ground. How can defiance and stubbornness against Allah, Mighty and Majestic, be greater than this? So we have here a contradiction of the explicit command, "Let the beards grow," and a second contradiction: imitating women. The third contradiction is that shaving the beard is obedience to Satan and disobedience to the Most Merciful. This is mentioned in the Qur'an, where our Lord, Mighty and Majestic, narrated that when He cursed the accursed Iblis and expelled him from His mercy until the Day of Judgment, Iblis rose up to oppose the law of the Lord of the Worlds, saying: So from that moment, Satan vowed to Allah, Mighty and Majestic, and this is part of his clear misguidance, that he would stand in the path of man and try to make him disobey the Most Merciful. From that is: This is the changing of Allah's creation. A woman puts on a fake beard, and this is what we have seen, but we have also seen it in men who imitate women, such as the British, as we mentioned earlier. Then they return to their original state and adopt fake beards. This is among the wonders of the misguidance of these people. So when Iblis said: There is no doubt that the Muslim who shaves his beard, given what we have mentioned of the explicit command to let it grow and the explicit imitation of the woman whom Allah created as a counterpart without a beard, if he knows all this and then contradicts the command of Allah, Mighty and Majestic, and imitates women, there is no doubt, and no uncertainty, that in this state he is a disobedient one to the Most Merciful and an obedient one to Satan in his aforementioned statement: And this is what the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) affirmed by cursing the one who obeys Satan in some of this changing, and in the gender for which some people might say that such a change is fitting. Despite that, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) cursed him. I mean by that his saying (peace and blessings be upon him and his family): Plucking the eyebrows is plucking out the hair, and tattooing is known to you all; it is changing the color of the skin with a type of dye. This is known in many Arab countries and non-Arab countries, where they tattoo their bodies: something visible on the face, something on the arm, something perhaps on the chest or the back, and so on, according to what Satan whispers to his close friends. So he (peace and blessings be upon him) said, clarifying the previous verse: So among the changing of Allah's creation is plucking the eyebrows, among the changing of Allah's creation is tattooing, and among the changing of Allah's creation is filing the teeth. This was apparently common in the past, and we no longer see it today. A woman may have been created by Allah with teeth that adorned her mouth and helped her crush her food, and her teeth may be like well-arranged pearls, one next to the other. But she is not pleased with that, so she takes a file and files down what is between the teeth until each tooth is separated from the other. This pleases her.

The questioner : In the beginning, it was sweeter, by Allah.

The Shaykh : I tell you, this pleases her. What pleased her? Satan whispered to her, corrupting her fitrah, that innate disposition about which Allah the Mighty and Majestic said: So when Allah the Mighty and Majestic created the woman, He gave her eyebrows that are paired with no white space between them. She does not like Allah’s creation, so she takes a tweezer and plucks the hair between her eyebrows. Or she may have eyebrows that, in her coarse understanding, seem thick, so she also refines them until they are like a crescent moon on the first night. This pleases her. And other women do not like any of that, so they shave it off and then dye it according to what her companion and her devil suggest to her. All of this is altering Allah’s creation. And this is a general affliction. I remember that some people are afflicted in their households, in their wives, or in their daughters with some of this. Some women are created by Allah the Mighty and Majestic with hair in certain places, such as the arm or the leg, and she comes and plucks all of it. This is also altering Allah’s creation, and first of all, it is a violation of the curse mentioned in the previous hadith regarding those who pluck the hair between their eyebrows. The point is: why was this hadith mentioned? It indicates types of altering Allah’s creation, and that this type of person who alters Allah’s creation was cursed by the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). The hadith itself, at its end, explains the reason for this severe and harsh ruling, which is the curse. It said: So his statement (peace be upon him): is the cause of the curse and the wisdom of the legislation. Otherwise, if the alteration were for an illness or a temporary matter, such as a person who was injured in the face and, as a result of this injury, his eyebrow was displaced, or his nose was twisted, or broken, or anything else, he has the right to restore what was injured to the state in which his Lord the Mighty and Majestic created it. However, if Allah the Mighty and Majestic created a person with a large nose or a flat nose, it is not permissible for him to engage in what is called today cosmetic enhancement. This is altering Allah’s creation. In summary, it is not permissible for a Muslim to proceed to alter anything of what Allah the Mighty and Majestic created upon him except for two reasons. The first reason is that Allah has permitted it. You all know His statement (may Allah bless him and grant him peace): It was mentioned in another hadith: So from this fitrah is that the Muslim trims his nails. This is an alteration, because Allah created the human being, and if the nails were left to their natural state, they would grow long and become like the fangs of beasts or the claws of beasts. Likewise, from the fitrah is plucking the armpit hair, shaving the pubic hair, and trimming the mustache. All of these are from the fitrah, meaning they should not be left as Allah the Mighty and Majestic created them, because they are among the matters with which our Lord Ibrahim (peace be upon him) was tested. The test here has a subtle meaning in its reality: on one hand, it commands us not to oppose the fitrah in general matters, and on the other hand, it commands us to oppose Allah’s creation in these specific things mentioned in the authentic hadith. This is the first matter that permits the Muslim to alter something of Allah’s creation. The other matter is that if he is harmed by something of what Allah the Mighty and Majestic created upon him, then to remove the harm, he may alter it, not for beauty or adornment, because the command is that what Allah the Mighty and Majestic created is beautiful. For example, suppose a person, whether male or female, has a tooth that protrudes from the level of the teeth such that he is injured by biting his lip while eating. In this case, he may undergo a surgical procedure to move the tooth from its position so that some of that harm that was affecting him is removed. Often the question comes: some people are created by Allah with an extra finger. Is it permissible to remove this extra finger or not? The answer, according to the previous detail, is: if he is not harmed by this extra finger in his work, it is not permissible for him to remove it; otherwise, it is permissible. Finally, we come to the issue of some hairy women. A beard or something like a beard may grow on them. Is it permissible for her to shave it? The answer is: the general rule is that Allah cursed those who pluck the hair between their eyebrows. Why? Those who alter Allah’s creation for beauty. So if she wants to shave for beauty or pluck, and both are equal in the crime, if she wants to shave or pluck for adornment and beautification, it is not permissible; otherwise, it is permissible. And in my opinion, there is nothing that justifies a woman removing hair from her face if it grows exactly like a man’s. And here I must remind you of a hadith, and with it I will conclude this hadith, if Allah wills. In this Prophetic hadith that I will mention, there is a point of attention for the general public: that beauty and loveliness are not in what they see, but in what their Creator and their Lord sees. It came in the authentic hadith that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) saw a man from his Companions who had lengthened his garment to below the ankles, and he said to him: O so-and-so, He said: "O Messenger of Allah, I am a hunchback," meaning his legs are curved, and his frame is not like people usually are. You cannot imitate him with your hand. The important thing is that the leg is not straight. Do you say "afkakh" or what do you call it?

The questioner : We say "afkakh."

The Shaykh : "Afkakh." So this Companion saw this as a defect in him, and therefore he lengthened his garment to cover this alleged defect. The Messenger (peace be upon him) answered him with his statement, and here is the point: And therefore, I say it is not permissible for a Muslim, male or female, to act in a way that arises from her mind, her opinion, or her emotion, claiming that, by Allah, this beard that has started to grow is not pretty. Why? Because if she plucks a little here and a little there, if he shaves it so that it grows evenly, is it your creation or Allah’s creation? Likewise, we say regarding the woman who grows a beard, or a man who is "kusaj," which we see is not a beard. The man who has no beard is "kusaj" in the Arabic language.

The questioner : "Amrad."

The Shaykh : "Amrad" is the young, beardless man, but we do not know this in the language. So if we see a man who is "kusaj," this is from Allah’s creation. And Allah shows us His signs on every occasion. Divine wisdom requires that He break the custom so that it does not become the assumption of some ignorant people that there is a system imposed on the Creator of the system. No, as we mentioned in the previous verse, and to show people, and so that people do not rely on custom and forget the divine power. He creates for them sometimes what they do not usually expect. He creates a man without a beard, and in contrast, He may create a woman with a beard. What does that man and that woman do? That man is shy, but this was when men used to maintain their beards. He is shy to sit among men without a beard. So either he takes a borrowed beard, or he withdraws into himself and develops what they call today a psychological complex. And so with the woman who has a beard, what happens to her? A psychological complex. If this man or that woman would remember this divine wisdom, that our Lord the Mighty and Majestic wants to remind people that He is the Doer of what He wills, and that He creates what He wills. He wants to show people a man without a beard, and He wants to show women a woman with a beard. So the man should not say, "This is not beautiful because he has no beard," and that woman should not say, "By Allah, this woman is not pretty, why? Because she has a beard." Because his case and her case are like the case of that hunchback man who was covering this divine creation with his long garment, and he said to him (may the prayer and peace of Allah be upon him): So when the Muslim proceeds from this standpoint and submits his affair to Allah the Mighty and Majestic, he does not rush to alter anything of Allah’s creation except by Allah’s permission, or for a harm that befalls him because of this thing that means he deviates from the rest of people. And this is sufficient. Perhaps I have prolonged on you, so bear with me.