Islamic preacher: Female ‘provocative’ clothing does not justify sexual harassment

Cairo – Prominent Islamic preacher Emad Refaat denied the validity of the fatwa circulated by some self-proclaimed preachers on social media sites claiming that “There is no penalty in Islam for sexual harassment if the harassed female happens to be immodest, arousing the harasser’s sexual instinct.”

In an exclusive statement to Al-Bawaba News Portal, Refaat maintains: “Immodest clothing can never be the cause of either sexual harassment or assault. Sexual harassment is strictly forbidden in Islam. While a Muslim woman is obliged to dress modestly, the Muslim man can never enforce himself as guardian or judge over her. As an act of obedience to God, man is obliged to lower his gaze whenever he sees a woman walking in the street.  

The veil gradually disappeared in the following decades, so much so that by 1958 an article by the United Press (UP) stated that “the veil is unknown here.”

However, the veil has been having a resurgence since the 1970s, concomitant with the global revival of Muslim piety. According to The New York Times, as of 2007 about 90 percent of Egyptian women currently wear a headscarf.

God Almighty says: “Say, “Obey Allah and obey the Messenger; but if you turn away – then upon him is only that [duty] with which he has been charged, and upon you is that with which you have been charged.”  Say, “My Lord has only forbidden immoralities – what is apparent of them and what is concealed – and sin, and oppression without right, […]”

Egyptian woman call for harsher punishment for sexual harassment – Mai Shaheen

He added that Islam enjoins some simple yet effective precautions to protect its followers from falling into such a sin.  It is obligatory upon men to avoid looking at women or deliberately looking at their beauty, whether purposely or potentially purposeful. This is something that he can do because it is within his capabilities, and it makes no difference if he is in a country where there are many women and girls unveiled.

As for an accidental glance, when he sees a woman but he does not stare repeatedly at her or look deliberately; but rather he carries on his way. This will not harm him and he is not sinning thereby, because it is beyond his control. This is the reason why God says (which means): “Tell the believing men to lower their gaze (from looking at forbidden things)” [al-Noor 24:30]. In the original Arabic text of the Quran, the literal meaning is “lower some of the gaze” which means that lowering the gaze completely is not obligatory and it is something that is beyond a person’s control, or when required in cases of necessity, such as a doctor looking at his patient and so on, or when a man looks at the woman to whom he wants to propose marriage to.