Recordings › Monday Nights with Mufti #183 | Q&A Unscripted & Unrestricted! 😉 | Mufti Abu Layth · 22 Sep 2020 › Segment 9 of 29
Do women have to cover their wrists and ankles in prayer?
salat salaah namaz salaat namaaz as-salah al-salah salawat hadeeth ahadith ahaadeeth hadis hadees ahaadith saheeh saheeh hadith sound hadith authentic madhab mazhab school of law madhahib mazahib madhaahib sajdah sajda prostration hanafite hanafiyyah hanafi school muftis jahannam jahanam jahannum koran quraan al-quran ayah aya ayat ayaat aayah aayat wahy wahi wahee sahabah sahaba sahabi sahabiyyah sahabiyat as-salaf salaf al-salih salaf us-salih al-salaf early generations ulema ulamaa hijaab hejab hijabi al-din ad-deen ad-din religionMust the wrists and ankles be covered? Keep the deen natural
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This segment44:33 to 52:47 · 8 min 14 sGeneral teaching
The answer in brief
machinesummary, machine-writtenMufti Abu Layth says relax: the deen is natural, and obsessing over whether a wrist, ankle or hair shows came centuries after the Prophet.
In more detail
A super chat asks whether the wrist bone and ankle must be covered in and outside prayer, saying Hanafi relatives insist on it though it is cumbersome; Mufti Abu Layth takes it to be about women in salah. Mufti says the deen was natural and was later turned into an 'OCD structure': early converts were told to bathe and simply poured water over themselves, while centuries later scholars asked whether every hair and the belly button had been washed. He says, as a fact, that women in the Prophet's time did not worry whether a wrist or ankle slipped out in sujud, and that Abu Yusuf held the forearms are not part of the covering. He argues that if it mattered God and the Prophet would have made it clear, cites the Quran's statement that nothing has been neglected in the Book, and says there is not a single sahih hadith or verse that explicitly explains what hijab is. Mufti says the clergy have betrayed the public for the sake of control, and that these details belong to an institutionalised Islam that came three or four hundred years after the Prophet.
Question as read aloud · questioner not identifiedShould the wrist bone and the ankle be covered outside of and inside of prayer? I've been told by my Hanafi relatives it should be covered, but it is cumbersome.
Position stated
Mufti Abu Layth says people should not obsess over whether a hair or some small part of the body is showing.
“the dean is natural take it naturally do not obsess over these little oh my god is this showing is that showing oh my god one hair came out two hairs came”
Category: teaching
Kind: general teachingTranscript
machine44:33 to 52:47 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary
not going to be your friend now [Laughter] even the angels are confused on this one can i take back my promise promise for what for that you're gonna be a good boy well i had my fingers crossed [Laughter] you take it back don't worry you take back your promise
take it somebody said i missed a super chat let me just check [Music] uh right now i can't see any that i've just taken a look here as far back as i can go um oh marshall should the wrist bone and the ankle be covered outside of an inside of prayer
i've been told by my hanafi relatives it should be covered but it's cumbersome rather oh but it is one must peruse one's prerogatives it is cumbersome since i have long limbs [Laughter] what was that uh street fighter character that had the long limbs wasn't he the indian one
i've forgotten his name now damn i used to be so obsessed with street fighter as a teenager but yeah but yeah so that basically that guy dalton that's it dalton i'm not sure why would you want to cover the wrists and the ankle oh this is i take it that the question is to do with women having to cover in salah do they need to cover their wrists look i would say that these things the deen
was natural you know when islam came it was not really this kind of uh ocd structure that people later converted into so for example when let's say um becomes a muslim in the famous story and he he is told oh many people they come to the prophet similarly and they become muslim and they want to touch the quran or they they want to read the quran or they want to do something and they're told
why don't you go take no one must do a russell so they take a kind of bucket and and they just go and they spill it over themselves and they just wipe down and they come now fast forward 300 years and the scholars would be like once institutionalization has kicked in and they'll be like no but has every every here has every hair being covered has it been touched have you managed to wipe your back and what about the belly button did you
remember the belly button did you remember underneath the knees did you remember oh but what about between the fingers between the two nutty this was not how the prophet and the companions in early islam behaved this was not they just had a natural like just a washing you know like it was a ritual we're gonna perform a bathing ritual they're just going to you know wash over with water and class later on as institutionalization kicks in
you get the ocd structures you get this element of control superstitions uh the this this kind of uh this ritualization but on steroids and at that stage people do all this kind of weird stuff so my point is that look keep the deen natural do you think in the prophet's time that women when they were praying they were like oh but is my wrist slightly uncovered or is my you know is my oh my god you know when i went into sujood did my
ankle slightly get uncovered you really think they they behaved like that they didn't i'm telling you as a fact they didn't they were just normal natural like they just covered and prayed maybe at times certain things were uncovered like these kind of things like wrists or part of the forearm and hence early salaf said the forearms were not even in the hanafi madhhab was it not abu yousuf um there's a position i believe also transmitted from ibn at birth but it's
abu yusuf has this position some other that the forearms are not even part of the hijab so i would say look relax if these things were that important would allah have forgotten to teach you you know allah says you know we have not fallen short in this book of ours in this message in this revelation that tibian and li kulishi that things will be made clear would the prophet not have highlighted it during his lifetime you bring me one sahih did you know
there is not a single sahih hadith to do with hijab not a single verse of the quran that explicitly explains what hijab is not a single verse now you could say they infer it you can infer but the verse does not clearly explain considering it's you're gonna get thrown into hell hey it might be i don't know about this might be the time to explain it's like if i'm going to shoot you for this afterwards then you know this now sounds like a good time to explain
what i'm expecting unless i just want to shoot you anyway so it's like what is the point then you know this is that same thing you know otherwise you just want to throw us in hell anyway so you you know what's this game of pretending we have free will so look this is why the ulama the clergy that we have have betrayed the public it's all about control i'm not saying
something sincere but it's about control i'm telling you and the dean is natural take it naturally do not obsess over these little oh my god is this showing is that showing oh my god one hair came out two hairs came you know this kind of thing is not the the the deen that the prophet brought yes this is the is institutionalized version of islam that three four hundred years after the prophet had been concretized by the clergy i accept that it is i'm not saying i'm not saying to you nobody in islam
has said these things many people have but it begins centuries after the prophet cool i hope that helps right so what is going on the extremist clergy uh mufti can you talk about ocd over prayer yeah the prayer is the same thing you know it's a it's a ritual that is
look a certain amount of ritual in life is is healthy a certain amount the tricky thing can be how much you don't want to turn into some weirdo but you realize that as human beings rituals play an important role in our psyche that's just the way human beings have evolved so praying in a day is an amazing ritual to have it is part of what the deen has imparted it is in we have been instructed but it is
Paragraphs overlapping 44:33 to 52:47. Full text on the recording page.
Cite this segment
Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2020-09-22-S09, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/jtyem-eee78/s/9/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2020, September 22). Do women have to cover their wrists and ankles in prayer? [Video, segment 2020-09-22-S09, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/jtyem-eee78/s/9/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2020. "Do women have to cover their wrists and ankles in prayer?" Video, segment 2020-09-22-S09, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded September 22, 2020. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/jtyem-eee78/s/9/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2020-09-22-S09, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{Do women have to cover their wrists and ankles in prayer?}}, year = {2020}, month = {9}, date = {2020-09-22}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/jtyem-eee78/s/9/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/jtyem-eee78/s/9/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2020-09-22-S09, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
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