Burn the Burqa, and the Beard
by Saif Shahin, New Age Islam
New Age Islam
columnist Saif Shahin has taken up an issue most misunderstood in
the Muslim community.
This brilliant piece explains the issue in the following words;
pronouncements of
Muslimness. You spot a woman in a burqa anywhere in the
“FOR some time now,
the burqa and the beard have been the most telling
Muslim just yet, but
the luxurious untrimmed ones, particularly when accompanied
world and you know
that she is a Muslim. Beards are not quite as exclusively
by a clean upper lip,
are close to becoming so.
There is nothing essentially Islamic about
either of them. The Quran does not make it mandatory for women to wear the
burqa: it simply asks all Muslims, men and women, to dress modestly. Nor does
it insist on beards for men. The rationale often cited is that Prophet Muhammad
used to sport a beard, and hence it is Sunnah to do so. But Sunnah is supposed
to be what made the Prophet distinct, and his beard certainly didn’t. Even Abu
Lahb and Abu Jahl, his biggest enemies, are known to have sported beards. In
any case, many bearded Muslims care little about a number of other things the
Prophet did, distinctive or not.”
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