| |
| |
Women in Islam: Hijab |
 | | However, unlike female garments such as jilbab, lihaf, milhafa, izar, dir' (traditional garments for the body), khimar, niqab, burqu', qina', miqna'a (traditional garments for the head and neck), and also a large number of other articles of clothing, the medieval meaning of hijab remained conceptual and generic. |
| | In their debates on which parts of the woman's body, if any, are not "awra" (literally, "genital," "pudendum"), and may therefore be legally exposed to non-relatives, the medieval scholars often contrastively paired a woman's "awra" with this generic hijab. |
| | This permitted the debate to remain conceptual, rather than get bogged down in the specifics of articles of clothing whose meaning, in any case, was prone to changes both geographic / regional, and also chronological. |
| www.irfi.org /articles/women_in_islam/women_in_islam_hijab.htm (4400 words) |
|
