Use Of Word Khimar: Compulsion For Muslim Women To Cover Their Hair
There is one additional requirement for women which is to hide items of ‘ Zeenat ’ including the ones on chest area with the exception of hands, face and feet. The word ‘ Zeenat ’ in classic Arabic is never used in terms of beauty, rather it refers to anything used to complement the beauty like jewelry etc. Regarding the word Khimar, the women of that time used to cover their heads with ‘ khimar ’ as a headgear, it was part of their culture, but when Allah wanted to give them directive to cover their ‘ zeenat ‘, they were asked to use the same ‘ khimar ’ to cover their chest area. This requirement doesn’t make use of ‘ Khimar ’ as a headgear a separate directive. Had it been the case, it would’ve been separately mentioned. Already available clothing was being made use of to give directive to cover ‘ zeenat ’ for women. For comments of Ghamidi Sahab , please refer to the video below from 1:51:34 to 1:57:46 https://youtu.be/RUAbhOt7g5k?t=6694
Please also refer to the video below from 00:06:31 to 00:09:04 https://youtu.be/SzUzXeyUT0U?start=6m31s
But sir, there’s another hadith that says that when women heard this ayat, they tore some cloth(sorry I don’t remember exactly which cloth the hadith was talking about) and “khimaared themselves” with it. As we know, khimaar was used as a headcover, so “khimaared themselves” could mean that used those torn pieces of clothes as headcover, right? But then, the ayat says to put their khimaars over their bosoms while the hadith says that they just put on a khimaar, so if we go by the literal meaning of the hadith, it would mean they put those pieces of clothes on head like a khimaar and the hadith doesn’t mention anything about covering the bosom, so if we interpret this hadith as saying “they put on a khimar”, it isn’t fully compatible with the meaning of the ayat. So to harmonize the hadith with the ayat, we have to say that the women made khimaar out of those torn pieces of cloth and wore it like it was ordered in the ayat i.e, over their bosoms, with nothing being mentioned about the head being covered or not, is it so? But it is also said that to harmonize this hadith with the ayat, we have to understand it as saying that they covered their heads AS WELL AS their bosoms with it , because from other ahadith, we know that the meaning of putting on a khimar is covering head with it, like the hadith which goes something like “the prayer of حائض is not accepted without a khimar.”,which is generally used to prove that women must cover their heads during prayer (Ghamidi Sahab also considers it to be a part of aadaab at least).How do we know which one is the more correct view? And I’m really sorry I know I’ve been bothering you guys with similar questions again and again but I’m really confused and I want to remove all of my doubts that’s why I’m doing so. Also, there was something written about this hadith in Dr. Amir Gazdar’s book, but since I don’t know much Arabic, I couldn’t understand it properly. So if anyone could translate that part, I’d be really grateful to them. And thank you for your patience 🙂
Thanks for your response Actually I don’t think about whether they covered their head or not before the revelation of this ayat, my concern is how they reacted to the revelation of this ayat. Since these women lived at the time of revelation, they probably understood the language of the Qur’an much better than anyone else who came later, so what they understood this ayat to mean is really important in my view. Yes, it could be that they always covered their heads because of their culture, but that’s exactly the same argument put forth by those who say that hijab is compulsory. Their argument is that since these women already covered their heads with a khimaar, the order of they ayat was for the women to cover their heads (as they would do because of their culture) and also their bosoms ( a new command) i .e , not to stop their old practice but add a new one to it. Ghamidi Sahab also discussed a similar hadith in the last video of 23 questions: Pardah. Interestingly , that hadith mentions the women of Ansaar, instead of the immigrant women. Ghamidi Sahab says that this hadith means that the women did exactly what was said in the Quran i.e, cover their bosoms and hide their ornaments with that “dupatta” (since Hasan sahab read the Urdu translation of the hadith which uses this word) . I’m confused if Arabic linguistics permit this interpretation of the hadith. Not that I’m doubting Ghamidi Sahab’s intentions, just wanted to be completely sure about the meaning of this hadith. And if this hadith actually means that they covered their heads with the khimaar, how can we say that head covering isn’t compulsory? The argument used by those who believe in its compulsion is that since those women heard it from their men , who in turn heard it from Prophet ﷺ, they must have done exactly how Prophet ﷺ understood this verse and if we think that the Qur’an isn’t saying exactly this, then their must be a problem with our interpretation, that we must have interpreted it incorrectly. Is there a video of Ghamidi Sahab on this topic(Hadith-Quran relationship)? Please share the link if you know .
Another reasoning that I came across is that the word khimaar has the same meaning as the modern word hijab ( not the ancient meaning of this word, which just means a curtain I think). This means that if today someone tells a woman to ” wrap their hijabs over their bosoms” it would mean to cover the head and then use the rest of the hijab to cover the bosoms. And the hadith would be something like this ” When they heard this ayat , wrap their hijabs over their bosoms, they tore some cloth and wore a hijab made of it” and then this would solve what seemed to be an incompatibility between the ayat and the hadith. How do you view this reasoning?
Brother Mumin if you are interested in knowing the historical evidences and how muslims in early islam saw this discourse I would advise you to watch the halaqa session ( 4 Chapters) by Khaled Abou El Fadl on sound cloud. He does not come to any conclusion of whether it is an obligation to cover the head or not in the videos.