Question:
I heard women’s voice is awrah? Is this true? When we are in a gathering of women and singing, you can of course hear our voices from afar too, are we sinful?
Answer:
The late Egyptian Shaykh Mutawalli Sha`rawi addresses this question in two places of his large collection of fatwas. In one place he says no, since many women among the early generations of Muslims taught classes attended by men, from behind a curtain (such as `A’isha the mother of the believers and Umm Darda’); this would have been impermissible if a woman’s voice was `awrah to men; therefore it is not `awrah. In another place he says yes, it is `awrah if it constitutes fitnah i.e. enticement. It can be added that in the latter case the same can be said of any voice that constitutes fitnah, including a man’s.
Hajj Gibril Haddad
