What is ‘aurat’?

When I was in elementary school (I attended an Islamic elementary school), I was taught that ‘aurat’ for women is most parts of their bodies, except face and palms, while for men, ‘aurat’ is ONLY from their navel to exactly above knees. It means parts of women’s bodies that are allowed to be seen are only their face and palms. Meanwhile, people can freely see men’s full head, neck, shoulders, chest, upper belly, arms, hands, and legs from knees below.

Why should women cover most parts of their bodies?
It is stated that women’s bodies—hair, neck, ears, etc—will easily turn men on. I suppose all men—creatures having penis since birth—are considered heterosexual in Islam, because people say that Islam only recognizes two kinds of sexes: male—again, all creatures having penis, and female—all creatures having vagina and breasts. If a man is turned on because of seeing a woman’s parts or her whole body, he will probably do some ‘unexpected things’, such as whistling, staring, touching, etc. Therefore, ‘to protect’ women from those unexpected acts, they are to cover (or ‘imprison’?) their whole bodies under loose clothes. This is also ‘to protect’ men in order that they will be ‘saved’ from temptation to do ‘immoral acts’. To protect men here of course means different from ‘imprisoning’ that I mentioned earlier.

So that why islam allow all muslim to cover their bodies..

fikhry hakim bin muhammad hilmi
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