The Issue of Hijab

By Mansoor Limba and Murtada Mutahhari

About the Book

The Issue of Ḥijāb is one of the most rigorous, nuanced, and intellectually honest treatments of Islamic modesty ever written. In this seminal work, the late Iranian scholar-philosopher Murtaḍā Muṭahharī goes beyond slogans and polemics to examine ḥijāb through history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and Qur'anic ethics.

Rather than reducing ḥijāb to mere dress code or cultural custom, Muṭahharī situates it within Islam's broader moral vision: the protection of human dignity, the strengthening of family life, social stability, and the ethical ordering of relations between men and women. Drawing on comparative history, he demonstrates that veiling and seclusion existed long before Islam-among Persians, Jews, Indians, and other civilizations-while carefully distinguishing Islamic ḥijāb from pre-Islamic and non-Islamic practices.

The book directly confronts modern objections: freedom, gender equality, social participation, insecurity, patriarchy, jealousy, and claims of women's oppression. With clarity and intellectual courage, Muṭahharī dismantles simplistic narratives and offers a principled Islamic framework that neither imprisons women nor dissolves moral boundaries.
At once scholarly and accessible, this work remains deeply relevant in a world where women's bodies are increasingly commodified in the name of "liberation," and where genuine ethical discourse is often replaced by ideological noise.

This carefully revised English edition, translated by Mansoor Limba, makes a modern Islamic classic available to a new generation of readers-students, educators, policymakers, and all those seeking a serious, faith-rooted, and intellectually grounded understanding of ḥijāb.

Neither confinement nor unrestrained mixing-Muṭahharī presents a third way: principled modesty anchored in human dignity and moral clarity.

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Obviously, this book is NOT the same, and MUCH THICKER than, the one by the same author, which has been published many years ago under the title ON THE ISLAMIC HIJAB or ISLAMIC MODEST DRESS.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B09NZF8X6X
• ISBN13: 9798791283603
• Release Date: December 2021
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.63 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.0"