A lady sent me a long email about how she read that the Quran never talks about covering the head. According to her, she read the Ayah of Surah An-Noor and that it uses the word Khimar which refers to a veil. She looked up the dictionary and it said things like a shawl or cover. It didn’t say anything about covering the head.
I started thinking: is this a common confusion? Or is it just a one-time email? So I dug around and this mindset is actually extremely common. I’d like to assume that anybody who has this confusion just doesn’t know any better, or whatever they read convinced them of this. I don’t like to think that they mean evil, or they have an agenda or a misguided opinion.
In Arabic language, nine different words refer to just covering the head. One of them is Khimar. The word that is used depends on the length of the head cover, as in whether it only covers the head or if it’s up to the neck or chest. Each has its own meaning, and in Arabic, the word Khimar is the one which is used in the Quran. We commonly use the word Hijab. Hijab is not a word for head cover. It refers to a barrier, like a wall or a curtain could be Hijab. So it’s just coined as Hijab, but that’s neither the word in Qur’an nor the Arabs ever used it like that. The word is Khimar. The cool thing about it is that the word itself includes the meaning of covering the head. Even men before Islam used to have Khimar. One of the names for their turban, if it was extra long and went down to almost the middle of the belly, was Khimar too. Women had different fashions and one of the things women before Islam had was a bandanna-like cloth that they would tie to the back with their ponytails and it would go to their back so they wouldn’t drape in front; they draped it behind them; this is also called Khimar. And the Quran instructed them to take their Khimar and place it in front of them (covering their chests). In other words, the only difference is to keep the Khimar – the head cover is already included in the meaning – to cover the front part of the body also and it should be certain length. This is the meaning, so the argument that Khimar means shawl, not head cover, doesn’t stand.
Do you know what Khamr is?
Khamr is alcohol, and it messes with your head. Khamr blocks your judgement. It literally means to cover, and it’s called so because it creates a block in your mind. It’s almost as though your head is covered up with something. It is part of the meaning of the word; we are not talking about the Islamic meaning, we are talking about the Arabic itself. Back in the day, if people saw horses with funny colours – like from the neck onwards is white and the rest is brown or something like that – they would say this horse has a Khimar on. It covers the head up to the neck and all the way down, so that’s why they call it a Khimar.
It’s so unfortunate when some people say that this refers to drawing their veils on their chests. That’s what some translations say also. Well, a veil could be a shawl or any other kind of cloth. It doesn’t really include head covering, but the Arabic word does so. I feel a lot of this confusion comes because people don’t pay enough attention to the original language. Some translations oversimplify the issue and we start coming to drastic conclusions. Even if you talk about all this, somebody gets upset and says: Who are you to tell me I have to wear this or that?”
I am not anybody to tell you anything, but what I’d like for people to know is the word in the Qur’an and its meaning in Arabic. If you think there is better evidence and some other meaning, tell me more about it and maybe I’ll do a talk about that someday.
Transcribed by Faiza Rizwan
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