Abdur-Raheem McCarthy – 3 Types of body hair in Islam

Salam Alaikum wa Rahmatullah. When it comes to our body hair in Islam, what is permissible for us to remove from our bodies? And what is haram to remove from the body hair? This is a question we get quite frequently from both sisters and brothers. And to make it easy. There are three different types of body here are three different categories that the body hair has to fall into one of these categories. And once you understand the categories, then you're going to what's permissible for you to remove, and what is haram to remove from your body here. The first category is the type of body hair that we will ordered to leave that it's not permissible for us to remove. And the example of

this type of hair is the beard for the man and the eyebrows, trimming the eyebrows for the women and also for the men as well. And what's meant by being hung on when it comes to the eyebrows, you know the styles that the women do today. But if someone has an abnormal eyebrow, like the unibrow words, you know, really big one big eyebrows, it's permissible to remove this in the middle. Also, if there's you know, their eyebrows are very big to put it down to a normal level, or there's a hair coming down into your eye and you have to you have to cut that all of this is permissible, there's no problem with that inshallah. And the second category is the type of hair that we've been told to

remove it's sunnah to remove. And this is for both men and women, when and then the example of that is the armpit hair, and the pubic hair. And also for the men, the trimming of the mustache. This is also from the Sunnah that we've been ordered to remove. And this should be done as it came in the Sunnah, at least every 40 days, meaning it shouldn't go over 40 days before you remove the pupil hair or their armpit hair. And before you trim your mustache, the third category are all the types of body hair, they didn't fall into the first category or the second category. And the example for those types of hair would be the hair that we have on our arms, on our legs, on our chest, on our

stomach on our backs. All of this generally it's there's nothing that came in Islam that it's you know, we should remove or shouldn't remove it. So we say generally speaking, it's permissible, halal to remove it. However, there is a difference when it comes to male and female when it comes to this type of body hair. When it comes to the females, it's better that they remove these hair, especially when they get married. And it's the custom around most of the Muslim world that the women have that they remove this type of body hair because she doesn't want to fall into imitating a man. And even when it comes to facial hair for the woman. If she has facial hair, which give her resemblance of a

man, he or she should definitely remove this as well. So this type of hair is better for her to remove. She doesn't have to but as we said most of the customers that we have as Muslims around the world, especially when the women get married, they do remove this hair well hamdulillah when it comes to the brothers, the original is that men have hair on these body parts that we mentioned. And the men shouldn't remove it, there could be certain cases where he's over hairy, very hairy back very hairy chest, something that's abnormal, like we mentioned earlier with the eyebrow. So here to make that less to take some of it off or even to remove it. There's no problem with that. But when

it comes to someone who has, you know, normal chest hair, normal hair on his arms and his legs and he removes it here, I would say don't do this for the brothers. Why? Because you're gonna fall into most likely imitating the women it's something that women do. So you will find that something that is haram, you could also fall into imitating the disbelievers many of them now who are moving the body hair, like the models you have online and things like this. So that's something that a Muslim man needs to stay away from. And it's not something that's manly to remove these types of hair. So therefore, even though say generally speaking, what is the rule because you look at something

generally, you say it might be permissible. But when you fall into other things that haram when it comes to imitating women or even attending disbelievers that would make it haram so therefore, it's something that men should stay away from inshallah. So these are the three types of body hair in Islam. And when it comes to obviously, the hair on our heads, what's important is that we whether you're male or female, that you stay away from different haircuts that can imitate the opposite gender or imitate the disbelievers. So any haircut is a haircut that would resemble the disbelievers resembles too far. Or it is something that imitates a woman if you're a man or vice versa, if a

woman were to cut her hair in a way that's that's usually the haircut of a man then this also will be haram it's not permissible. And that's something we need to be very careful about because it's grown in the in a western societies where it's okay for a man for a woman, for example, to cut her hair like a man very short, but this is something that wouldn't be permissible in Islam if it's going to fall into imitating a man and Allah knows best