Can you please briefly discuss the issue of Beautification in Islam?
We have mentioned last time we met, that Islam promotes beautification within the legitimate boundaries and there are means which are forbidden in Islam for us to take in order to gain, or reach beautification because it’s not a goal by itself, it is a means that would take us to where Islam wants us to go and we have mentioned that a husband should look good for his wife and vice versa.
We said that Islam, if we try to dissect the forbidden things, talks about three things and this is what I believe, there might be more.
These are the categories that I think Islam talks against in forms of beautification. We said that the main reason for making these things forbidden in Islam is that people seek beautification and at the same time they alter the creation of Allah as mentioned in Surat An-Nisa and elsewhere. So, these two reasons should prevent Muslims from following the footsteps of Shaitan and not pursuing the concept of beautification, the concept of being young forever because this goes against Islam and we have also mentioned that there are three categories that usually beautifications fall under:
1) You either beautify the hair on your body whether on the head or whole body, by removing or by keeping, by bleaching, by dyeing the hair.
2) The second category is using the color on the body and this falls under, for example tattooing because you use ink or special paint to fill the puncture one makes on the skin. Bleaching, for example done by Jay and Michael Jackson, they used to be black and all of a sudden became white. This is ridiculous when you come to look at it, changing the color, you are that humiliated? Why? You should be proud of your color! Why follow the media?
3) General Cosmetic Surgery- where you have structural corrections. For example, restructuring the face, you have a big nose and you want to have a small nose, injections to remove wrinkles, reducing the size of the body, enlarging parts of the body.
Let’s move to the first category now.
As for the hair on the body, scholars divided it into three main types:
a) Hair that you must remove.
b) Hair that you must not remove.
c) Hair that is optional to remove.
We are not interested in the third type as it is up to us and permissible. For example the hair on the arms and legs and chest (of course for men and if there are any hair on the chest of a woman, then it becomes mandatory for her to remove that hair). This is up to the man or the woman to remove the hair from their arms or legs.
In some countries it becomes recommended when the husband wants this from his wife. In some countries men removing hair is considered as the sign of gayness or homosexuality, then removing hair becomes forbidden in this case. Many body builders shave their hair from their bodies to show off and this sport is not permissible in Islam, it’s permissible to lift weight and work out in the gym but it is not permissible to expose your body to the people and expose your “Aurah” and boast about something that Allah has given you to appreciate rather than to impress people and to go out of what Allah has created you for. So, now this is the permissible part of removing the hair of the body.
If we go on to the second part which is about the hair that are forbidden to remove then if you do remove these hair you are sinful and you are changing the creation of Allah. But before we go into this category we go to the first one which is about the hair that you must remove. Maybe someone would ask, listen if we must remove this hair, isn’t this hair part of what Allah has created, so wouldn’t I be changing the creation of Allah when I do this? What do you think the answer would be?
Some individuals would say, for example why we should cut our nails, this is also changing the creation of Allah. I would like you to answer this In sha’Allah but as we know that the prophet (salla Allahu alaihi wa sallam) mentioned certain things that are from the Fitrah (the natural inclination) and the prophet is the one who is been endowed with knowledge from ArRahman from Allah the One who has created us.
Exactly, that is good. This is the answer. It’s exactly when Satan stood up and said I am not going to prostate to Adam. He could have justified this by saying: prostration is Haram to other than Allah, but he was doomed to the Day of Judgment because it was Allah who ordered him to do this.
So now, we go back to square one, which is total submission to Allah Azza wa Jall, it is Allah who instructed us to remove this hair that he created and this is an act of obedience and it’s a form of worship and the hair that a Muslim should remove from his body is the pubic hair and the armpit hair for both men and women and its mandatory, it is not sunnah, in the sense that you have people thinking that this is recommended if I do it Alhamdulillah, if I don’t it’s up to me. I have seen men that are proud of their manhood, when they take out their T-Shirts you see the jungles of Africa under the arms and maybe you find a monkey here or there. He says yes I am a man, a macho man. This is the place where generally filth and sweat collects.
The biggest and most famous man that ever walked on earth was the prophet (salla Allahu alaihi wa sallam) and it is part of his full manhood that he used to remove the armpit hair and the pubic area hair. This is what he instructed us to do. This is the part of cleanliness of a Muslim not only externally but also internally so this is a must.
We have something that is in the between and that is you must not remove. It’s forbidden for you to touch.
For a man it’s the beard, it is forbidden for them to remove it and this has evidence from the Qur’an in one verse and it has ample evidences from the sunnah of the prophet (salla Allahu alaihi wa sallam) and the consensus of the scholars throughout the time, the four schools of thought agree that it is forbidden to shave it and they differ whether it is permissible to cut it short or not and those who say it is permissible say that whatever exceeds a fist length it is permissible for you to shorten.
It is based on the hadith by Ibn Abbas and Ibn Umar when they went for hajj and cut their beard.
I go on the opinion that it is not permissible to touch the beard.
What do women have to do if they get a beard?
Definitely she has to remove it, because this goes against her nature. As it is forbidden for men to shave their beards because it goes against their nature and makes them look like women. Likewise if women get a mustache or a beard, they are compelled to remove it so that they do not imitate men and having said that the length of the beard is either to be left as it is or it should not be shorter than a fist, other than that, this would not be permissible with the majority of scholars and a lot of a Muslims unfortunately seem to think and I don’t know where they get it from, that it is a sunnah, if you do it Alhamdulillah and if you don’t do there is nothing wrong in it.
Sunnah has two meanings: first something that prophet (salla Allahu alaihi wa sallam) did and second, a revelation that came from Allah to the prophet (salla Allahu alaihi wa sallam) which is found in the authentic ahadith.
This is beautifully stated and it’s exactly the right thing or the right way to look at it. Sunnah can mean the way of doing anything that prophet (salla Allahu alaihi wa sallam) did. Even the five mandatory prayers are considered to be a sunnah, but once you want to classify it whether it is mandatory, recommended, permissible, not recommended or forbidden then this is a different story.
So when we talk about the beard as something that the prophet (salla Allahu alaihi wa sallam) did, it’s a sunnah. But when we want to talk about the ruling of the beard, growing the beard or actually let us say leaving the beard. See you don’t have to grow it if it doesn’t come out, you don’t have to put fertilizers on your face and water it every day hoping that it grows up. This is not what Allah wants from us. So this if you look at the ruling, is mandatory.
Having said that, it’s mandatory for women to remove the beard, if some women have the misfortune of growing facial hair.
Women on the other hand have hair on their bodies that must not be touched and this is referred to the eyebrows as we have mentioned in the previous hadith where the prophet (salla Allahu alaihi wa sallam) said about the women plucking the eyebrows and he said that may Allah curse the women who plucks the eyebrows and the women who has that done. So plucking the eyebrows is forbidden for a woman.
What about the woman trimming the eyebrows?
The most authentic opinion is that it is also not permissible, neither shape it, trim it or to cut the long bits of it because it falls under the same category of changing the creation of Allah for the purpose of beautification.
So it’s causing the same result in the end.
Some scholars said that prophet (salla Allahu alaihi wa sallam) did not vary the means by saying that you have to shave the private hair and pluck the armpit hair.
A woman must not pluck and it’s of a lesser degree to trim with scissors but it’s still forbidden unless the hair itself becomes harmful. Like if they go into the eyes. And we have tons of questions saying my husband wants this and my husband doesn’t want that. The husband wants me to pluck my eyebrow. So the answer for this is, it is not permissible for a person to obey another person in disobeying Allah the Almighty and this is what the prophet (salla Allahu alaihi wa sallam) said. So you have to try your best and convince him, talk him out of it and if this is not permissible then you may use other means to reduce the harm of your eyebrows.
Like for some of the brothers who are facing problems at home when they want to grow their beards might face oppositions from their parents, they have to obey their parents, but Allah has more rights to be obeyed.
What about the women who have uni-brow, hair between the eyebrows?
Some scholars say that this is not considered to be part of the eyebrows because if you identify the beard for example the facial hair that grows on top of the cheek is not considered to be beard so you can shave this and the hair that grows on your neck is not part of your beard so you can shave this as well because the definition of beard is the hair that grows on your lower jaw.
Likewise if you define the uni-brow (hair between the eyebrows- nose brow) some people say that it is a part of the eyebrow and some say it is not the part of the eyebrow.
It’s not directly covering the eyes, it is a nose brow
Some scholars say it is permissible to remove, my personal view is that women who pluck this area, they don’t find it easy after a year or two, it becomes harder, harsher and it looks ugly if they don’t do it every single or every other day and besides when they are joined they look beautiful on most women. But unfortunately, women get influenced by the media. But when I mentioned that a woman can reduce the size of the eyebrows.
I meant she can do so by bleaching and this is an issue of dispute among scholars, some say that bleaching it is changing the creation of Allah.
Bleaching meaning adding dye to it?
Yes, it gives the hair same color and tone of the skin. It makes it look like the skin. If I look at it from a distance, I wouldn’t see the actual hair of the eyebrows but if I come so close and see that there are white hair and shaped in a nice way, but the hair that was bleached is not visible until you come close to it so some scholars say no, this is considered to be tricking and you are doing the same effect.
You are causing the same apparent result.
Yes, but at the end of the day, it’s not plucking nor cutting the hair nor removing it. So what’s wrong in it? And this is the opinion of Sheikh Ibn Taymiyyah and he says that bleaching is the legitimate way out, women can do this and it’s not changing the creation of Allah the Almighty.
One may argue and say is this prohibition of plucking the eyebrows only for women or also for men? The answer is: it’s also for men because the majority who would do this are women so if we find men who do this then it is more forbidden upon them.
If it is the action of women and if a man does it than it would be as though the man is imitating the women.
That is completely true and unfortunately nowadays we have so many confusing things of men doing things that are strictly for women such as ear piercing and this would in sha’Allah come on a later stage.