IslamQA: Can Muslim women wear shirts and training pants for sports?

Salam. I have studied that Muslim women should cover themselves outside of the house with khimar and jilbab. My question is, does Muslim women allowed to wear two piece clothes (long sleeve shirt and training pants) to do sports, or do we still have the obligation to cover ourselves with khimar an hijab especially made for sports? Thank you.

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

That is a matter of some debate, but the mainstream position is that wearing long-sleeve shirts and training pants is permissible provided that her costume properly covers her body, is not tight and is not see-through. As mentioned in a previous answer, the goal of women’s dress code in Islam is to hide her physical attractions so that a lecherous man should have nothing to feast his eyes on when he sees a Muslim woman. If the sports costume achieves this goal, then it is permissible. This is the opinion of Egypt’s fatwa authority (which has many qualified scholars from al-Azhar University)¹ It is also the opinion of the Syrian (female) scholar Dr. Līna al-Ḥumṣī (professor at the Damascus branch of al-Azhar University).²

Both of the aforementioned fatwas deal with the wider issue of women wearing (loose) shirts and pants and their conclusion is that there is no clear evidence to forbid it, and that the logical position is that anything that achieves the goals of the Islamic dress code, which is to prevent the sexualization of women, is permissible.

Follow-up Question

Brother, I have read your answer regarding Muslim women who wear shirts and training pants for sports. Jazakallah khayr. I have one more thing to ask. I have searched for the answer before and the result on the search engine is that, many sites wrote this hadith as an argument on why Muslim women can't wear pants: "Allah Curses the women who wear men's clothing and men who wears women's clothing." I began to develop doubts because of this. I need your insight.

That hadith can be interpreted in a number of ways. The mainstream interpretation is that the Prophet was referring to cross-dressing with the intention of appearing like the opposite sex. No one will mistake a woman who wears hijab and sports pants for a man since the hijab is a very obvious statement of her femininity, so the hadith’s statement is considered to be irrelevant to this question.

A minority of Muslims (literalists/textualists) reject using common-sense interpretations of the Prophet’s statements. They treat the Prophet’s words similar to the way we treat the Quran and believe every hadith should be followed to the maximum possible extent. They think we should in general copy what the Prophet says without thinking about the intents and purposes behind his statements, and for this reason they believe that all clothing that has any association with males should be forbidden to females. This is not the mainstream view and the majority of scholars do not think in this way.

1. Archived link to the fatwa.
2. Archived link to her fatwa.