KUALA LUMPUR, June 26 — An Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (Isma) cleric accused Sisters in Islam (SIS) today of being driven by lust when the women’s rights group said that the Quran does not specifically mention hair as part of a woman’s “aurat”.

Isma ulama council member Ustaz Muhammad Firdaus Zalani cited Islamic scholars like Imam Abu Muhammad Hazm, Al-Hafiz Abu Umar Abdul Bar Al-Maliki and Imam al-Qurtubi al-Maliki who described hair and the rest of a woman’s body, except for her face and hands, as “aurat” that must be covered up.

“We have long been aware that the fact is, SIS’ struggle on how women’s hair is not aurat is not a real struggle for the truth about Islam, but it’s a struggle based on their lusts and desires that are disguised with so-called academic arguments,” Muhammad Firdaus said in a statement.

“If it’s true that they really support the Quran, as shown in this case, then they should be at the forefront in supporting hudud because all of the punishments under hudud are clearly stated in the Quran,” he added.

On Monday, Malay Mail Online reported SIS as saying that the Muslims’ holy book does not specify hair as part of a woman’s aurat, but that such a perception came from a hadith narrated by Asma Abu Bakar, which they said has been contested by Islamic scholars like Thariq Iwadullah and Sheikh Nasiruddin Al-Abani on grounds of authenticity.

The increasingly conservative stance of Islamic authorities and figures in Malaysia has been reflected in the way Muslim women are told to wear the tudung and are harshly criticised if they do not so, even though most Malay-Muslim women in the 1950s and 1960s, before the 1979 Iranian Revolution, did not cover their heads.

Tudung brands in Malaysia have boomed since the Iranian Revolution started the popularisation of the tudung in the country, with one company estimating about 80 to 90 per cent of Muslim women aged between 25 and 50 years now wear headscarves.

Conservative clerics and Islamic figures in Malaysia have repeatedly censured SIS, with Selangor even gazetting a fatwa labelling the organisation as “deviant”.