The Epistemology of Women’s ʿAwrah in Tafsir Al-Misbah and the Four Sunni Schools of Islamic Law

Abstract

This article examines how women’s ʿawrah is constructed and justified in M. Quraish Shihab’s Tafsir Al-Misbah and selected texts from the four Sunni legal schools. It addresses the need to connect comparisons of legal conclusions with their underlying sources, inferential procedures, and contexts of application. Using qualitative library research, the study combines close reading with comparative epistemological analysis informed by al-Jābrī and uṣūl al-fiqh. The corpus includes the interpretation of Qur’an 24:31 and 33:59 and relevant Ḥanafī, Mālikī, Shāfiʿī, and Ḥanbalī passages. The findings show overlapping reliance on scriptural authority alongside different uses of linguistic interpretation, transmitted positions, practical need, and social purpose. They also demonstrate the necessity of distinguishing prayer-related covering, exposure before non-maḥrams, and the regulation of gaze. The article develops a qualified bayānī–burhānī spectrum as an interpretive heuristic rather than a ranking of schools or an equation of contextual reasoning with philosophical demonstration. Engagement with contemporary criticism of Shihab reveals that historical explanation does not independently establish a change in the binding force of a command. The study concludes that responsible comparison requires explicit evidentiary warrants, accurate attribution of disagreement, and attention to human dignity. Its contribution is a contextualized model of legal justification bounded by the selected textual corpus.