Plucking Facial Hair

Plucking, Trimming, Shaping, Shaving and Bleaching Eyebrows

Shaping the eyebrows into the desired shape is a common practice among the women for beautification as they claimed. However, is it permissible in Islam?

The prophet S.A.W. forbade and cursed the one who did it with his saying:

“Allah curses the women who tattoo (others) and the women who ask to be tattood, the women who connect hair with false hair, the women who remove facial hair and the women who ask for facial hair to be removed and the women who ask for gap to be made between their teeth for beauty; these women who change Allah’s creation.”

The term ‘namisat’ refers to women who pluck their own or others’ facial hair and the ‘mutanammisat’ refers to women who have their facial hair plucked by others. The vast majority of linguistics (ulama al-lugha), jurists (fuqaha), hadith experts (muhaddithun) and Imam Nawawi are in compromise that it (facial hair) refers to plucking ‘facial’ hair. In contrast, some classical scholars are in the view that ‘nimas’ refers specifically to plucking eyebrows, and some say eyebrows and forehead. Imam Abu Dawud also has stated in his Sunan that, “Al-Namisa is a woman who plucks the eyebrows in order to make them thin.”

However, the majority of scholars who say that it refers to the removal of ‘all’ facial hair also make exceptions such as removing hair from the chin, upper lip and forehead (details to follow). As such, the issue remains focused on the eyebrows. Imam Abd al-Razzaq relates with his chain of narration that a woman asked the mother of the believers Sayyida A’isha (Allah be pleased with her) whether it was permitted for her to remove facial hair in order to beautify herself for her husband. A’isha (Allah be pleased with h...

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...mbles a people, then he is from this group”. Those women who dyeing the hairs, it will leads to the disclosure of the awrah because the act of dyeing the hair itself is to show off to the people, if the non-mahram who sees it, thus the hukm is haram.

Wear Makeup

Wearing light makeup as it cannot be distinguished between the face that does not wear and does wear makeup is permissible. Further, if a woman wears it for the purposes only to face a healthy glow then it does not matter. It is because light makeup does not become the subject of others’ attention, it is just to make the face look better. This beautification is permissible by the shariah, Aishah also ever allows the sahabah and female slaves to apply light cosmetics. The sahabah also had discussed about the application of the eye liner to the eyes and they categorized it as ornament that permissible to do.