Let Shayṭān Not Entice You Away

The second verse is: O children of Adam, let Shayṭān not lead you into fitnah, let him not entice you away, as he put your parents out of Jannah by stripping from them their libās — for when they ate of the fruit their nakedness was disclosed. And then there is an ominous note here, an ominous message: they see you. Shayṭān sees you — he and his whole tribe see you — from where you do not see them. They have that advantage of you. But if you keep the dhikr of Allah, they can do nothing.

And then there is this: that when they commit some obscenity or immorality, they offer an excuse. The background is that they used to perform the ṭawāf of the Kaʿbah naked, the men by day and the women in the evening, because — and here again is a notion about clothing — they said that they could not wear it; one of the reasons, it appears, was that the clothing in which we sin cannot be worn to perform the ṭawāf. So if one asked why they committed this obscenity, they would say: thus we found our forefathers; this is what our forefathers did — as though that were an evidence. And in some cases they would say: Allah commanded us to do it.

In the early days of Islam — rather, before Islam — the matter was very relaxed. Nudity was of no great account, none at all. The Prophet (peace be upon him) was very young when the Kaʿbah was being built, and he was very shy, of great modesty. He was carrying stones, which were leaving a mark; he wore only a loincloth, and was a young boy. So his uncle, feeling for him, told him that it would mark his shoulder: take off your loincloth and place it there, that it may protect your shoulder. He would of course be naked, but that was no concern. The Prophet (peace be upon him), after many had done so… and then he fainted. He had a natural modesty — may Allah grant us that modesty, that bashfulness — whereas today bashfulness is thrown out of the window. And the Prophet (peace be upon him) spoke of modesty as a great branch of faith: that faith is affected by a decline in modesty. Yet people feel they must do as they do: this is the kind of clothing that is sold, this is what Primark sells; there is no other clothing to be had; and this is how everyone else dresses, and none wishes to appear out of place. Subḥān Allāh. Consider the emphasis here.