The following story illustrates how one religious Muslim woman lost everything; her modesty (Haya) and good reputation.
Sister Fatima relates a story of the difficulties she had encountered due to letting her guard down around men.
In her job, Fatima would avoid males and wear her face veil (Niqaab).
Work colleagues constantly teased her and accused her of being introverted, antisocial, and extreme in her views.
However, for all of this, she remained cheerful and upbeat and avoided mixing freely with unrelated men to safeguard and protect her chastity and modesty.
However, she also wished to be accepted by her work colleagues.
The remarks about her were disturbing, and she wanted to show that she was not a cold person and a killjoy as they always maintained.
She felt pressured to be different.
So instead of avoiding male work colleagues, she decided to have social relations with them.
At first, she felt awkward, but later she started to feel comfortable and to enjoy it. In conversations, the men she knew insisted that she remove her veil to reveal her face.
She reluctantly complied, and a few months later, she took the headscarf (Hijab) off permanently.
Doing so felt good as Fatima was getting the attention of her male colleagues. She had no idea she was playing with fire by letting her guard down in front of her male colleagues.
On seeing her beautiful face without a headscarf (Hijab), a male coworker began showing interest in her.
Fatima started a relationship with him even though this man was already married to another woman and had children. The love relationship grew until it became sexual fornication (Zina).
Colleagues and the people around Fatima commented just how much she had changed and began to say she was a loose woman.
Inevitably, her illegitimate relationship ended, and she got fired from her job.
Her poor judgment in allowing the criticism of others to change her behavior cost her modesty (Haya) and led to open sexual distraction (Fitnah) and a prohibited sexual relationship (Zina).
To this day, Fatima greatly regrets her actions and feels sincere remorse.
The following article shows how jealously (Gheerah) and how Allah (SWT) teaches us how to regard unrelated women in answering, Why Do Muslim Men And Women Eat Separately In Saudi 