Wearing colored hijab where women commonly wear black

5-9-2016 | IslamWeb

Question:

All your fatwas on the hijab mention that the most important requirement of a Muslim woman's dress is the fact that it should be loose, modest and fully-covering her body. Colour and quality of clothing is not important, they state, and a woman is not obliged to cover herself in black. So my question is the following: in a country like Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, and so on , we find that the majority of women, especially national, local women, cover themselves by wearing abayas and, because of this, even foreign Muslim women adopt the black abaya-style of dressing; so Muslim women who choose to dress in colours other than black seem to stand out in a crowd of Muslim women. Provided that they are modestly dressed overall, with their dress meeting Islamic requirements, is it wrong for women to wear a different colour from the colour of the majority of the women, when you say that color is not an important criteria of the hijab? Please clarify.

Answer:

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah and that Muhammad, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, is His slave and Messenger.

As we have previously mentioned in that fatwa, there is no particular color for the Islamic hijab. If the woman's clothes fulfill the conditions stipulated in the Sharee'ah, then it constitutes a proper hijab regardless of its color. There is no harm in wearing a color other than black.

However, it should be noted that one of the conditions (of Islamic dress) is that the clothes must not be intended for fame (Libaas Shuhrah), which is prohibited. Ibn ‘Umar  may  Allaah  be  pleased  with  him narrated that the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, said, "Whoever wears a garment of pride and vanity in this world, Allaah will clothe him in a garment of humiliation on the Day of Resurrection." [Abu Daawood and Ibn Maajah]

Al-Munaawi  may  Allaah  have  mercy  upon  him said in Faydh Al-Qadeer, "Ibn Al-Atheer said, 'It means that the Muslim should not wear clothes that make him stand out among others by wearing styles and colors. This is not peculiar to clothes but it also applies to wearing anything that is not commonly worn by people and that makes him the center of attention.'

Allaah knows best.

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