“Ibnu Sīrīn called niqab an innovation”
The saying cannot be verified as his — its chain was not found, and only one source transmits it. Even the classical attempt to explain it away is offered as a guess, openly labelled as such.
The claim
Ibnu Sīrīn (d. 110 H), a leading figure of the generation after the Companions, is reported to have said "the niqab is muḥdath" — newly introduced.
Read literally, that would mean Muslim women originally did not veil the face, and the practice arrived later. It is one of the more effective objections, because it appears to come from within the tradition rather than against it.
The classical answer
Abū ʿUbayd (d. 224 H) argued the saying has been misread. On his reading, what was new was not face covering but a style of niqab, the one that leaves the maḥjir exposed. The earlier form sat closer to the eyes, or showed only one.
Some have interpreted this report to mean something other than its actual sense — saying that women formerly did not wear niqab but left their faces exposed. That is not what it means. Rather, the niqab among the Arabs is the one that shows the maḥjir… What Muḥammad meant, in our view, and God knows best, is that women showing the maḥjir was the new thing.
Note how he ends: in our view, and God knows best. He is offering a reading, not a settled explanation, and he says so.
The stronger answer
The stronger case does not rest on the interpretation. It goes behind the report itself.
The chain was not found. Only Abū ʿUbayd transmits it, and on that basis the words cannot be verified as Ibnu Sīrīn's at all.
That changes what can honestly be said. Not "Ibnu Sīrīn said niqab was an innovation, but he meant something else," that concedes an attribution the evidence does not support. The accurate statement is that the saying is unverified, and that even if authentic, its plain reading is contested.
Is "bidʿah" a fair label anyway?
No: calling niqab an innovation is not appropriate, whatever sense is intended. The word niqab appears explicitly in ḥadīth texts; the garment existed in the Prophet's time, was worn by women then, and was acknowledged by him.
If instead "bidʿah" is meant loosely — that niqab itself was an Arab invention that came after the earlier waṣwāṣ and burqa — that reading has no support either. Philologists agree that the niqab, as the word was used, left the maḥjir exposed. No source states that niqab originally covered the whole face, maḥjir included, before later Arab practice opened that part up, Abū ʿUbayd himself presents that idea only as his own guess when he interprets the saying, not as an established fact.
Check your understanding
What does the note conclude about the saying attributed to Ibnu Sīrīn that niqab is "muḥdath" (an innovation)?