FAH0033 ISLAMIC STUDIES

SEPTEMBER 2011 SEMESTER

By

Makhliyo Gapparova

Norashiqin Zawawi

Nurul Fakhira Zulkefli

Shahira Mohamad Jumaili

Siti Nursyazwani Ismail

(Petroleum Engineering Foundation) and,

Nadhirah Mohd Rosdi

Noorsyafira Mohamad Helmi

(Petroleum Geoscience Foundation).

© COPYRIGHT UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY PETRONAS (UTP),

Bandar Seri Iskandar, 31750 Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia.

Abstract

Nowadays, the issue of tabarruj / flaunt / finery occurs almost

everywhere in the world, done by almost everyone living on earth. This issue is

becoming more and more crucial with the fast-pace technology development.

This problem is dangerous because it has been the main problem of crime

scenes and social problems that has occurred and is occurring mostly in cities

and urban areas. In this issue, the females are always seen as the victims. How

true this statement is and how does this happen are the properties that we

need to solve. To solve these problem statements, we did a survey on this

topic. The survey shows that most people agreed that women are the cause of

the occurring social problems. This shows that women must do something in

order to control the rate of social problems rather than just to follow their

desire that always wants to look charming in front of the others.

Introduction

The topic that we chose is tabarruj. Tabarruj (flaunt / finery) simply

means to display what needs to be hidden in the women. This term has been

used in the modesty of a woman going out and showing her charms and to

highlight the merit is by covering it in front of strangers or ajnabi.

Here are its definitions via different sources :

1. The author of Lisān Al-’Arab (3/33) said:

“[Tabarruj] is the woman’s displaying of her beauty, or exposing her face and

the charms of her body to men, and everything that elicits their desire, and

strutting in her walk, so long as that is not for the husband.”

2. Imam al – Qurtubi (RA) mentions the meaning of al – Tabarruj after

gathering the views of the previous commentators of the Qur’aan.

He says, in short,

“ Al - tabarruj means a woman exposing her beauties to men.”

(Tafseer al – Qurtubi, vol. 14, pg 175 ; Cairo)

Background Literature

Issues

Dalils of Tabarruj

1. Women that wear tight clothes and on their heads there are humps

like those of camels

Dalil :

The Messenger (sallAllaahu ‘alayhi wasallam) said,

“There shall be (in the later) part of my nation women who are dressed

but are in fact naked. On their heads are humps like those of camels.

Curse them for they are surely cursed.”

(Reported by at-Tabaaranee, Shaykh al-Albaanee graded this hadeeth

“Saheeh”)

2. Women who change her walking styles to seduce men and a wife that

beautify herself in front of other man instead of her husband

Dalil :

“The parable of a woman who moves with a slow sweeping motion

trailing her beautified clothes performing not for her husband is like

darkness of the Day of Judgement, she has or comes with no light.”

(Reported by at-Tirmidhee in his Sunan, Shaykh al-Albaanee graded the

hadeeth “weak”)

3. Women who are using too much perfume

Dalil : Abu Hurairah said that:

A woman passed by him smelling strongly of scent. He called to her: "O

slave of the powerful, are you going to the mosque?" She said that she

was. He said: "Go back and wash it off. I heard the Messenger of Allah

(saws) say: 'Any woman who goes to the mosque wearing perfume will

not have her prayer accepted by Allah; first she should go back home

and have a bath *to wash it off+.”

Imam Adh-Dhahabi said in his book Kitaab al-Kabaair (The Book of the

Great Sins):

"Of the deeds woman is cursed for are displaying the ornaments which

she is wearing, wearing perfume when going out, and wearing colourful

clothes and silky short cloaks."

4. Women that soften their voice when addressing men

Dalil : In tafsir ibnu kathir, Allah says:

[بالقول تخضعن فل]

(then be not soft in speech,)

As-Suddi and others said, this means, do not be gentle in speech when

addressing men.

Related past studies

In 2003, a study on tabarruj was done by an undergraduate student

from Malaysian Islamic Science University (USIM) for her academic project

paper of al - Quran and Sunnah Studies Faculty (FPQS). This research was done

to differentiate between the need to have external beauty and the need to

develop the beauty of the soul from the Islamic perspective.

http://ddms.usim.edu.my/handle/123456789/3204?show=full

Method

Sample [ONLINE SURVEY FORM]Tab

Data collection

We collect the data through:

1. Online survey forms

2. E – books

3. Blogs

4. Online forums

5. Online encyclopedia (Wikipedia)

6. E-mails

7. Social networking

8. Books

Study instrument

This study is fully conducted through online survey forms and a few

other references.

Result

Data analysis issues

Based on the survey, we chose ten questions that relates to our topic of

TABARRUJ and another four questions on the respondents’ backgrounds.

These are the questions asked in the survey form:

1. Have you ever heard of tabarruj before?

2. Do you think Muslim community today know well about Tabarruj?

3. What do you think the hukum of tabarruj?

4. In your opinion, how many women around you doing tabarruj?

5. Among of this action, please tick the action/s that you think considered

as tabarruj?

6. In your opinion, why women nowadays doing tabarruj?

7. Do you think the hukum of tabarruj discriminate women in beautifying

themselves?

8. Should women go out without taking care of their appearance by not

dressing properly?

9. Do you think that tabarruj is the main cause of many social

problems nowadays?

10. ”Today many people do not know about tabarruj and its hukum”. Who

should be blamed for this?

11. What is your gender?

12. How old are you?

13. Where are you from?

14. What is your religion?

COMMENTS :

1. Have you ever heard of tabarruj before?

For the first question, there are two options either yes or no. The

percentage of yes is 55% while the others answered no which is 44%. What we

can tell from the result is that tabarruj is a word that is not common amongst

people. From our direct survey, people only know what tabarruj is when we

said something about display beauty to ajnabi person. Only few people could

tell what the meaning is. In conclusion, majority people are familiar with the

word tabarruj.

2. Do you think Muslim community today know well about Tabarruj?

For the second question, we prepared three possible answers which are yes,

no or I don’t know. 78% answered yes, 16% no, and the remaining 6% said I

don’t know. Most of people believe that Muslim community know well about

tabarruj, but there are still few people who said Muslim community don’t

know about this issue and minority which is ignorance type answered they

don’t know about others point of view. What we can conclude is most of our

respondents think that community today don’t know well about what is

tabarruj.

3. What do you think the hukum of tabarruj?

When we asked people about the hukum of tabarruj, 75% said tabarruj is

haram, 16% said makruh, and 7% of people answered “I don’t think it is

wrong”. Although the number who said tabarruj is haram is quite large, but it

still surprising when there still got people who answered makruh and some

believe that there is nothing wrong with doing tabarruj. We should know that

tabarruj is haram in syariah. Rasulullah SAW clearly said in the hadith:

“I give my acknowledgement that you must not set partners to worship besides

Allah, that you do not steal, commit fornication or adultery, that you do not kill

your child, that you do not commit any falsehood before your hands and

between your legs, that you do not wail and that you do not make tabarruj like

that of jahiliyyah (pre-Islamic era).”(Reported by Ahmad ibn Hanbal in his

Musnad, Shaykh Ahmad Shakir graded the chain of the hadeeth as “good” and

stated that Imaam ibn Kathir mentioned this hadeeth in his tafsir saying that

the chain of this narration is “good”.

In conclusion, majority understand the hukm of tabarruj, which is haram.

However, there are still a few people think that it is nothing wrong with doing

tabarruj. We believe that the main reason why they think that tabarruj is

makruh and it is not wrong is because of they lack knowledge on this matter;

they are committing it and refuse to say it is haram to defend themselves.

4. In your opinion, how many women around you doing tabarruj?

For the fourth question, we provided them with four answers which is

“almost all of the women”,”majority”,”women who up to date with fashion”

and “a few”. The results are 16%, 49%, 27% and 16% respectively. Most people

said that majority around them are doing tabarruj. While 27% said only women

who up to date with fashion are doing tabarruj and 16% believe that tabarruj

are done by all of the women. According to the flowchart, it is clear that that

most of the women in this world commit tabarruj.

5. Among of this action, please tick the action/s that you think considered

as tabarruj?

Question number 5 requires them to tick what actions that they think is

considered as tabarruj. For this kind of question, we put many options. But

most people agreed that showing necklaces, earrings and the neck is mostly

considered as tabarruj. While the action with the lowest percentage is to be

gentle in speech when addressing men. The conclusion is, the large number

of our respondents agree that showing necklaces,earings and neck are

the actions which considered as tabarruj, while only few people said be

gentle in speech when addressing men is considered tabarruj.

6. In your opinion, why women nowadays doing tabarruj?

For the 6th question, we asked respondents their opinions about what is the

reason for women doing tabarruj.To make it easier, we didn’t put many

options but only four options to make it easier when it comes to evaluation,

but we believe there are many reasons to be concerned. 44% said that women

are doing tabarruj because they want to follow the trend. Meanwhile, 34% said

that women do not know the hukum of tabarruj, that’s why they still commit it.

13% said that it is fitrah (natural) for women to look beautiful and the

remaining 8% said that women beautify themselves (tabarruj) to seduce men.

Based on our respondent’s opinion, the main reason why women doing

tabarruj is because they want to follow the trend and only few people said

women doing tabarruj is to seduce men.

7. Do you think the hukum of tabarruj discriminate women in beautifying

themselves?

This question is the most important question, because we are eager to know

what others would say about discriminating the muslim women. As a woman,

surely everyone has the desire to beautify themselves for her own satisfaction

but there is a limit. Now, let us reveal what are their responds. Do they feel

discriminated? Alhamdulillah, about 85% answered no. Tabarruj does not

discriminate women in beautifying themselves. They all believe that Islam has

a special way of conveying beauty only to the beloved husband. But also about

12% answered yes, tabarruj discriminate women in beautifying themselves.

Based on result, most people understand that Islam never discriminate women

in beautifying themselves, It is just we have limit and to know who we should

display our beauty to. Nevertheless, a few people said that Islam discriminates

women. They might have their own reasons why they said so. What we can

conclude is those who answered yes maybe they love to beautify themselves

and still cannot accept the law of Islam in conveying beauty.

8. Should women go out without taking care of their appearance by not

dressing properly?

For the eighth question, the answers are yes, no or I am not sure. Most of

the respondents answered no (around 86%), 2% answered yes, and 11%

answered I am not sure. As expected, majority answered no, we should not

ignore our appearance just because they are afraid of committing tabarruj.

Tabarruj is display of beauty, but dressing properly is not necessarily making us

beautiful in front others. It is enough if we just take care of the cleanliness and

tidiness of our outfits to display good image. 14% who answered no, we

assume that either they do not know the truth of tabarruj or they actually

don’t understand the question. To those who misunderstood the meaning of

tabarruj might think that tabarruj prohibits people from dressing properly. This

is wrong, Islam never teaches us to ignore our image in front others but only

not to show our beauty to random people.

9. Do you think that tabarruj is the main cause of many social

problems nowadays?

The next question is provided with two options; yes and no. About 80%

answered yes while 20% answered no. Minority that said no maybe thought

that today’s social problems are caused by other factors, not because of

tabarruj, while others agree that tabarruj is the main cause of many social

problems happening nowadays such as free sex, baby dumping, uncontrolled

relationships between male and female and many more. It is agreeable that

tabarruj is the main cause of many social problems nowadays as most of our

respondents said so.

10. ”Today many people do not know about tabarruj and its hukum”. Who

should be blamed for this?

For the 10th question, we are looking forward to the respondents’ opinions

about the person to be blamed when there are many people who do not know

the hukum of tabarruj. Most of them blamed themselves while the minority

admitted that the blame should go to the school syllabus practice. In

conclusion, one should be blamed if one do not know about this matter, they

should take the initiative to explore more about islam and not just blame

others.

11. What is your gender?

The next question is about their genders. This is because we want to know

which gender cares the most about this issue. Based on the result, 58% of

them are female and 42% are male. As expected, this issue is regarding to

female surely so, no wonder that majority of our respondents are female. But

we are really curious and eager to know the males’ points of view about

tabarruj since we need to know the responses from both genders and see how

their opinions differ from each other and to get a more relevant answer.

12. How old are you?

For question number 12, we asked about the age of the respondents.

Most of them, 84%, are from 16-20 years old. Meanwhile, 9% are from

20-24 years old,5% are 24 years old and above, and lastly, only 1% are

below 16. What we can conclude is most of our respondents are about

the same age of our age, teenagers. While, only 1% are below 16. This

maybe because the young people do not concern about this kind of

matter yet, perhaps they still young and not so familiar with tabarruj.

13. Where are you from?

a. Places by country :

Places No. of respondents

Malaysia 169 India 1

Jordan 1 Egypt 2

UAE 1 Ambiguous Error / Empty 7

TOTAL : 181

b. Respondents in Malaysia only (by states) :

States of Malaysia No. of respondents

Sarawak 4 Perak 28

Johor 7 Pahang 6

Selangor 49

Penang 5 Negeri Sembilan 12

Kedah 10 Terengganu 3

Malacca 1

Kelantan 3 Sabah 4

TOTAL : 132

c. Respondents by States, cities and other smaller parts of the countries :

Places No. of respondents Shah Alam, Selangor 9

Kuala Lumpur, Selangor 11

Subang Jaya, Selangor 1 Cyberjaya, selangor 1

Banting, Selangor 1 Klang, Selangor 3

Seri Iskandar, Perak 1 Malim Nawar, Perak 1

UTP, Perak 2 Sitiawan, Perak 1

Teluk Intan, Perak 2 Tapah, Perak 1

Serdang, Kedah 1 Langkawi, Kedah 1

Nilai, Negeri Sembilan 1

Seremban, Negeri Sembilan 9

Taman Guru, Seremban, Negeri Sembilan

1

Kota Konabalu, Sabah 1

Tawau, Sabah 2

Kulai, Johor 1

Johor Bahru, Johor 1

Butterworth, Penang 1 Kuching, Sarawak 1

Machang, Kelantan 1

Cairo, Egypt 1

This question is asked so that we could determine how the condition of

a certain place affects the way the questions would be perceived and

answered by the respondents. According to table (a), we have a total of 181

respondents whereby 169 (93.37%) of them are Malaysian, a respondent for

each countries of India, Jordan and UAE, that is 0.006% for each of these

countries, 2 (0.011%) from Egypt and a total of 7 (0.039%) anonymous

respondents. This ambiguity is caused by unanswered question. These 7

people may have skipped the question purposely or maybe unintentionally

such as over skipped question as they scrolled down the survey form. To sum it

up, most of our survey is based on the Malaysians’ points of views only.

14. What is your religion?

This question is to know how a person’s religion background affects his

opinions on TABARRUJ. The respondents are mostly Muslims by the numerical

value of 179 (98.895%). Only 1 (0.006%) respondent answered “other” and

another one did not answer. He may forget to answer or over skipped the

question. In a nutshell, most of the responds are based on the views of

Muslims.

Analysis on daily response :

The line graph above shows the responds we got during the days we started

the survey until we got the results. The graph the rating of the respondents in

answering the spread sheet and survey forms. The number of respondents are

at maximum at the beginning of the survey since at that time, we had

promoted the survey form by posting it at the Facebook to attract the

respondents answer it.

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2Fspr

eadsheet%2Fviewform%3Fformkey%3DdGxvbGFYZHdhTWYyeXFUeHZXWUVm

VlE6MQ&h=kAQFMq7foAQFB6erY6KvUlV8HMvwj3dBMgQIVtjAI7l5-rg

This is the link we spread to our friends and acquaintance. Alhamdulillah, the

responds are positive. We can see from the graph above that the respondents

gave their cooperation to answer and giving their comments or opinion about

tabarruj.

Discussion

Discussion on findings

Study implication

From this study, we found that many people have heard of tabarruj, but

do not know what it is about. Although that many know it is haram, but they

still commit tabarruj. Most of the respondents see tabarruj as not covering the

aurah and displaying the jewelries mainly. The second highest perception is

using to much perfume. The third highest point is the walking style. These

show that many people are attracted to smell and walking style, besides body

curves and skin. The voice as aurah is very uncommon among the people. This

could be due to the non-stop debuting women singers from the industry. This

has made them to think that there is nothing wrong in softening the voice

when speaking with the males.

It is also proven that among those who commit tabarruj, it is not mainly

because they do not know the hukm, but to follow the trend instead. Only a

few considered tabarruj as a way to seduce men and to appear attractive in

front of others. Since most of trends come from the westerners (who are

mainly comprised of the non-muslims) and the, indirectly, the root of this

problem is the influence from the westerners. This shows how great they have

manipulated the minds of the Muslims nowadays and how strong the

contaminations are until the muslims sights towards the implementation of the

Islamic values is blocked by the trends and cultures created by them. However,

it is a relief that most respondents agree that the prohibition of tabarruj is not

discrimination towards women. This shows that people are not burdened by

the shari’ah of Islam. This could convey that the Muslims are very sincere in

practicing shari’ah in their lives not just to be known as Muslims.

From this survey, it shows that most people agree that tabarruj is the

sole cause of crime scenes happening nowadays. This directly tells that in order

to create a surveillance society, ones must stop the unhealthy practice of

tabarruj first. The, we can talk about ways of reducing the crime rate. The

society mostly blames themselves for not knowing the hukm of tabarruj. This

shows that Malaysian citizens are very aware of the need to know the hukm of

tabarruj. Some blame the society and others put the blame on the parents.

Only minorities blame the school syllabus.

Study Limitations and Future Research

1. We lack variety of respondents’ roots. The respondents are limited to

mostly Malaysians only because according to our questions, most of the

respondents are Muslims from Malaysia. The survey form only revolves

around the nearest people because we posted the link for the survey on

Facebook and sent it by e-mails, that way; only our friends and family

are informed about the survey form. We only have a few foreign

respondents that are the UTP’s international students. Hence the view

of the respondents on TABARUJ is solely based on the condition of

Malaysia’s cultures, not from the view of other lifestyles. We would like

to pursue this research in a broader perspective will involvement of

respondents from all over the world in the future.

2. There are ambiguities in the result of the responses. The total of

respondents differs over every question. This shows that some did not

answer some questions. Thus, we do not have a very precise and

complete overall picture of the responses of this issue. In the future, we

will ensure that every respondent never miss even a single question

while giving their responses.

3. There is no variety of religion background of the respondents. Based on

the summary of the result, almost 99% of the respondents are Muslims.

Hence, the opinions given may be based on mostly Islamic views. We

look forward to seeing responses from people of other religions too in

the future.

References

1. Tabarruj. (2011). Retrieved November 21, 2011, from

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGx

vbGFYZHdhTWYyeXFUeHZXWUVmVlE6MQ

2. Rosmawati Ismail, (March 2003). Faculty of Al – Quran and As

– Sunnah Studies (Undergraduate’s Academic Project papers)

in Malaysian Islamic Northern College. At – Tabarruj Fi Nazar Al

– Islam. Retrieved from

http://ddms.usim.edu.my/handle/123456789/3204?show=full

3. Al – Quran and As - Sunnah

4. Wikipedia