Is It Permissible to Remove Strays of Hair around the Eyebrows?

Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

Question

Is it permissible to remove strays of hair around the eyebrows and/or to “clean” them up?

Answer

In the name of Allah, Most Merciful.

I pray that this finds you well and in the best of health and spirits.

May Allah grant you all good and success in this life and the next.

It is permitted to trim one’s eyebrows slightly if they are unusually thick or to trim stray hair. What is interdicted in the Prophetic hadiths is “shaping” the eyebrows.

And Allah alone gives success.

[Shaykh] Faraz Rabbani

Shaykh Faraz Rabbani spent ten years studying with some of the leading scholars of recent times, first in Damascus, and then in Amman, Jordan. His teachers include the foremost theologian of recent times in Damascus, the late Shaykh Adib al-Kallas (may Allah have mercy on him), as well as his student Shaykh Hassan al-Hindi, one of the leading Hanafi fuqaha of the present age. He returned to Canada in 2007, where he founded SeekersGuidance in order to meet the urgent need to spread Islamic knowledge–both online and on the ground–in a reliable, relevant, inspiring, and accessible manner. He is the author of: Absolute Essentials of Islam: Faith, Prayer, and the Path of Salvation According to the Hanafi School (White Thread Press, 2004.) Since 2011, Shaykh Faraz has been named one of the 500 most influential Muslims by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center.