What gets me regarding this conversation is that although in some schools of thought a Muslim woman cannot cut or trim her hair she is then expected to shove the whole mass up under a headscarf.
When I still had long hair and wore hijab I didn't have the time to blow-dry my hair in the morninings because it was so thick so I ended up just letting it air dry a bit, tying it back and then putting on my hijab. After a hot, muggy day of sweating in my hijab with already damp hair my head was pretty ripe by the time I took my scarf off when I got home in the evening!
On another note I generally find that the fatawa regarding women not being able to cut their hair, period, come from more Deobandi inspired mufti's such as
Mufti Ibrahim Desai who generally come from S.Asia where culturally women do not cut their hair, regardless of whether they are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Xtian, etc... Just a thought.
Behishti Zewar contains rulings about cutting the hair being forbidden. It also forbids women to give their husbands foot massages, as this is an imitation of Hindu women. B.Z. also says that it is "makruh" for a woman to call her husband or her parents by their first name.
I remember once a shaykh (western raised, Pakistani origin, secularly educated, Deobandi sufi) being asked about this hair rule in B.Z. and he said that it was part of the consideration of urf, or the culture of the people, and that it was superior character to adhere to these things so that one does not offend one's elders or other people and that it comes from a place of purely good intent - that women look like women (never mind that many sadhus have super long hair... I guess that doesn't count as "imitating a Hindu").
Basically because it's "superior character" to constantly worry about what everyone else thinks of you.
Another example of an urf ruling would be some Maliki fatwas about niqab for men because Tuareg men traditionally veil their faces, while the women do not.
I realize now one should have asked him about B.Z.'s teaching of supremacy of certain classes of people / ethnicities over others in light of the claim of Islam that "no Arab is superior to a non-Arab... no white superior to a non-white." Or is that a part of the urf we should all respect?
Topic: Long hair ?