Answered by Shaykh Yūsuf Badāt
Question:
For hair removal purposes, is it allowed for other women to view women’s body including their private parts?
Answer:
In the Name of God, Most Merciful, Most Kind
Jazak Allāh Khayr/ Thank you for your question.
In Islam, a woman may not show or expose her nudity except to her husband. A Muslim woman can expose any part of her body to another woman except the portion that is between the knees to the navel. This principle can only be flexed, ignored, overlooked or broken if the matter is related to a medical surgery or something of a similar dire necessity.
“Mainstream Islamic jurists have agreed that the nudity of a woman to a woman is the extent of the nudity of a man to a man. In other words, that area which is between the naval to the knees. Hence, it is permissible for a woman to look at another woman’s nude body other than the area between the naval and knees. The reason for this is they are of the same gender and the general improbability of sexual temptation. However, it will be impermissible if this leads to sexual desire, abuse or illegal homosexuality.”(Al-Mawsūʾah Al-Fiqhīyyah)
“Tell the believing women to lower [some] of their gazes and also guard their private parts and not expose their adornment except that which [necessarily] appears thereof and to wrap [a portion of] their head-covers over their chests and not expose their adornment except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands’ fathers, their sons, their husbands’ sons, their brothers, their brothers’ sons, their sisters’ sons, their women, that which their right hands possess, or those male attendants having no physical desire, or children who are not yet aware of the private aspects of women. Let them not stamp their feet to make known what they conceal of their adornment. Turn to God in repentance, all of you, O believers, that you might succeed.” (Qurʾān: 24:31)
And Allāh knows best.
