Is eye makeup halal (permissible) for a wearer of a niqab (Islamic headgear for women allowing only the eyes to be visible)?
A news photo inspired the question.
One bump, for the day crew. Any replies?
I’m pretty sure I recall a CNN story called “Beneath the Veil” that suggested that makeup was illegal under the Taliban, but I can’t vouch for how accurate an interpretation of hallal that is.
Here’s a thread on the Algeria.com forums where women discuss hair coloring, lipstick, etc. during Ramadan. My read is that makeup is okay, but maybe not during Ramadan. There are other issues addressed that I don’t have time to track right now. There aren’t citations to speak of.
Again, how the Taliban interpreted the text is perhaps a different story.
It’d take some time to dig up cites, but there doesn’t seem to be a consensus (as is the case with most things related to hijab). Some say that it’s permissible in general, and some say that it’s permissible only when in the presence of one’s husband or unmarriageable relatives.
I remember that some years back, there was a whole to-do over a woman in Florida who insisted on posing for her driver’s license photo with a niqab, and then sued when the license was ruled to be invalidated. In the discussion here (I don’t want to overtax the servers to dredge it up), people commented on the fact that she seemed to be wearing lots of eyeshadow and mascara in the photo in question, which many people found odd. (IIRC, she lost, and eventually posed for a photo without the niqab so that she could retain her driver’s license.)
I’m pretty sure the Taliban banned all cosmetics, but they also banned white socks and women learning to read, neither of which is haram according to the vast majority of opinions, so I wouldn’t trust them for an accurate take on what is and isn’t permitted.
If the purpose behind the niqab is to make Muslim women sexually unappealing to men, why not just make them all go out looking like Sylvia Miles?
I don’t know if you’ll get one straight answer on this.
From what I have seen (granted, limited knowledge in this area), this is a matter of interpretation. Some people believe that the instruction to “hide one’s beauty” from all male strangers includes not wearing makeup in public, as it calls attention to one’s beauty. Others don’t agree, noting that there is nothing directly written about makeup in the Quran, and the use of kohl eyeliner and perfume was documented among women living at the time of Mohammed. This is “ordinary adornment” and not prohibited.
It seems to me that Islam is lot like some other major religions–some things are open to interpretation, and followers (and religious leaders) may take a different stance on an issue despite using the same source texts.
Historically, veiled Muslim women have always worn eye makeup from the beginning. It is actually encouraged by the Prophet’s sunnah to wear kohl, which is traditionally believed to be eye medicine. In fact, the Arabic word for ‘ophthalmologist’ is kahhâl, which literally means ‘dealer in kohl’. I have been around the world, I have been in various Islamic milieus, and I swear I have never seen anyone in the world apply more makeup more than Arab women. It begins with kohl but doesn’t end there: mascara, eyeshadow, foundation, blush, lipstick, you name it. It’s so much a part of Arab culture that I think everyone takes it for granted that women will enhance their femininity, even when strict Islam keeps it all under wraps.
It would not be possible in Islam to ban all makeup the way some fundamentalist Christian sects have done. The most ultra-strict mullas might insist on limiting it to kohl as approved in the sunnah, but they’ll never get rid of kohl. So when you combine dark eyeliner that highlights the beauty of their luminous orbs with a niqab that hides everything but the eyes, you get this peculiar effect of a woman’s entire allure concentrated into her eyes. And what a concentration!
Nowadays, especially outside the Arabian Peninsula, only a small minority of Muslim women wear the niqab, stereotypes aside. I think if it weren’t for neo-fundie revival, the custom would have mostly died out by now because there was originally no niqab rule in the first place. It was first instituted by the Abbasids in the 2nd-3rd centuries AH, who took away whatever freedoms the early Muslim women had enjoyed. Arabian women in the Prophet’s time and immediately afterward did not go around veiled. The custom was adopted from other cultures, the Byzantines and Persians, after Islam expanded into the Fertile Crescent region.
I once heard in a lecture by a famous professor of Islamic studies that centuries ago, when all women went around veiled and secluded, they learned how to silently communicate with guys they liked with nothing but a quick glance of their eyes. Say once a day on the way to school, passing in the street, they would have a chance for a few seconds to make eye contact. All their erotic meaning would be concentrated into that single smouldering glance. Eye makeup would have been essential to intensifying this experience.
Hey, who turned up the heat in here?
P.S.
Yep, ladies here wear makeup under their veils. Stores here sell tons of the stuff.