The duty of lowered gaze presumes rather than forbids mixed-sex interaction

Evidence

The issue of intermixing between men and women is very clear [in Islam] . There are etiquettes of mixing that the sharfa has spelled out. So when we say there are etiquettes, it also means that there is ikhtilat, but it must be done in accord with certain rules. So when God says “ghu#u min ab�arukum” [lower your gaze] , it doesn’t mean that a woman should not go out from her house. If she is not to go out of her house at all, then what is the point of having all the instructions about wearing modest dress [libas m�tashim] ? Neither does it mean that women and men cannot make eye contact when they work together, for example, or when they buy and sell from each other, or in an educational setting. Now, tell me, did the Prophet not meet and talk to women? Did women not pray directly behind men in the mosque without any partition/separation [Q. between them? — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 763

Categorization

• XREF: Corroborates the vault’s insistence that norms of modest conduct encode social boundary rules rather than pure segregation — parallels the Islamic-modesty discussion across earlier passages.
• SEED: Angle: the internal textual logic by which modesty codes require public presence — the opposite of the liberal cliché that veiling is about concealment/erasure of women.