ease in the matter of their dress, but in public they had to be particular so that their very appearance should be indicative of modesty. On another occasion, the Muslim women are required to wear a dress whose very appearance should distinguish them from such women as did not have a good reputation: “O Prophet! tell thy wives and thy daughters and the women of the believers to let down upon them their over-garments; this is more proper, so that they may be known, and not be given trouble” (33:59). It seems that this injunction was required by the special circumstances which then prevailed at Madīnah, where the hypocrites would molest a good Muslim woman who went out to transact her affairs and then offer the excuse that they thought her to be a woman of ill repute. This is plainly hinted in the verse that follows: “If the hypocrites and those in whose hearts is a disease and the agitators in Madīnah desist not, We shall certainly urge thee on against them, then they shall not be thy neighbours in it but for a little while” (33:60). The Arabic word for over-garment is jilbāb and it means a garment with which the woman covers her other garments or a woman’s head-covering, or a garment with which she covers her head and bosom (LL.). It may be part of an ordinary dress or it may be a kind of overcoat. Nor is the wearing of it compulsory under all circumstances; it is rather a kind of protection when there is fear of trouble, and in the case of older women it is dispensed with altogether as stated elsewhere: “And as for women past childbearing who hope not for marriage, it is no sin for them if they put off their cloaks without displaying their adornments” (24:60).

Privacy

Islām sets great value on the privacy of home-life. In the first place going into houses without permission is strictly forbidden: “O you who believe, enter not houses other than your own houses, until you have asked permission and saluted their inmates” (24:27). And again: “O you who believe, let those whom your right hands possess and those of you who have not attained to puberty ask permission of you three times; before the morning prayer, and when you put off your clothes for the heat of noon, and after the prayer of night.