Mukhtasar Kitab Jilbab al-Mar'a al-Muslima
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- al-Quds
Mukhtasar Kitab Jilbab al-Mar'a al-Muslima (Abridgment of the Book of the Muslim Woman's Jilbab) is a legal treatise abridged by the Palestinian scholar Husam al-Din Afana from Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani's work Jilbab al-Mar'a al-Muslima fi al-Kitab wa-l-Sunna, outlining the rulings and requirements of women's Islamic dress.
Background and Purpose
Afana prepared the abridgment in Abu Dis, Jerusalem, completing it on Friday morning, 6 Jumada al-Ula 1419 AH (28 August 1998 CE), while serving as an associate professor of jurisprudence and legal theory (fiqh and usul al-fiqh) at the Faculty of Da'wah and Usul al-Din at Al-Quds University.
He undertook the work to make al-Albani's research accessible to general Muslim readers, observing that many women fell short of fulfilling the legal requirements of the jilbab and adopted modified fashions—such as wearing a headcover over a blouse and skirt or over trousers—under the assumption that these met Islamic standards. Recognizing that contemporary readers often lacked the endurance for extensive technical literature, and that much of the original book addressed specialized scholarly debates, Afana sought to present its practical legal conclusions in a concise form.
Methodology and Scope
Afana outlined seven specific methodological editorial choices in condensing al-Albani's original work:
- Omitting the introduction to the revised edition of Jilbab al-Mar'a al-Muslima, which contained extended polemical replies to scholars who mandated covering the face and hands.
- Omitting the introduction to the second edition of the work under its earlier title, Hijab al-Mar'a al-Muslima.
- Removing extensive discussions of hadith chains of transmission (asanid), limiting attribution to Sahih al-Bukhari or Sahih Muslim where applicable, or citing the original compiler along with al-Albani's grading for other collections, while integrating these references directly into the body text instead of footnotes.
- Omitting redundant hadiths whose meanings were adequately covered by other cited narrations.
- Removing the original end indexes and replacing them with an abridged table of contents.
- Incorporating important footnote annotations—including passages from Ibn Taymiyya's Iqtida' al-Sirat al-Mustaqim and commentary by al-Albani and other scholars—directly into the main text at appropriate places.
- Inserting minor necessary textual additions.
The abridged core of the work details the eight essential conditions for a woman's legal garment when appearing outside the home: covering the entire body except what has been exempted (the face and hands), not being an adornment in itself, being thick and non-transparent, being loose and not form-fitting, not being scented or perfumed, not resembling men's clothing, not resembling the clothing of non-Muslim women, and not being a garment worn for fame or ostentation (libas shuhrah).
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