Also, seven out of ten women are either old or ugly and they do not want to show their age or unsightliness to everyone. Or they are jealous, and they do not want to appear ugly in  relation to others who are more beautiful. Or they are frightened of assault or aspersions,  and  want by nature to cover themselves so as not to suffer assault, nor to be accused of unfaithfulness by their husbands. If noted carefully, it is seen that it is the elderly who hide themselves most. While only two or three out of ten women are both young and beautiful and do not feel uncomfortable at displaying themselves.

It is clear that people are discomforted at being looked at by people they do not like or  find tedious; they are upset by it. If a beautiful immodestly dressed woman takes pleasure at two or three out of ten men who are canonically strangers looking at her, she is bored by the seven or eight. Also, since a woman with uncorrupted morals is sensitive and easily affected,  she will certainly be distressed at dirty looks whose effects have been physically experienced, indeed, are poisonous. We even hear that in Europe, the place of open dress, many women  are fed up  at being the object of attention, and complain to the police, saying: “These  brutes  keep staring at us and disturbing us.” This means that present-day civilization’s unveiling women is contrary to their natures, while the Qur’an’s command to veil themselves is both inconformit y with women’s natures, and saves them – those mines of compassion who  may be worthy companions for all eternity – from degeneration, degradation, what is in effect slavery and wretchedness.

Furthermore, by nature women are fearful of men who are strangers, and are

anxious at them. Fear naturally demands the veiling of women. For in addition to suffering the difficulty of bearing the load of a child for eight or nine months, which certainly embitters  the eight  or nine minutes’ pleasure, there  is the possibility of suffering the calamity of bringing up a child for eight or nine years without protector. Since this happens frequently, by creation they truly fear strange men and by nature want to hide themselves from them. Being weak, their creation demands that through veiling themselves they do  not  excite the appetites  of men outside the stipulated degrees of kinship, nor allow any opportunity for assault; their  weak creation gives powerful warning. It shows that their cloaks and coats are shields and fortresses. The fact that, according to news received, the bare-legged wife of a high-ranking man in the world was accosted in the country’s capital, in the market-place in daylight in front of everyone by a common shoe-shiner, deals a slap in the shameless faces of those opposed to the veiling of women!

First PagePrevious(255)Next PageLast