How is wearing a wig imitating the kafir?

Question

Islam Q&A write:

If a woman wears a wig and adorns herself with it, even if she does this for her husband, she is imitating the kaafir women, which the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) forbade: “Whoever imitates a people is one of them.” -- Sheikh Muhammed Salih Al-Munajjid

I'm unclear how this amounts to imitation, as I don't encounter many people who wear wigs. It may be more of a historical thing.

Question: How is wearing a wig imitating the kafir?

I understand there may be scholars who don't hold the opinion that it amounts to imitation, which I want to put aside in order to understand the motivation behind this part of this fatwa. The sheikh has some justification for writing that; I'm wondering what it is.

Answer 1

Wearing wigs are haram for another reason:

An Ansari girl was married and she became sick and all her hair fell out. Intending to provide her with false hair, they asked the Prophet (saws) who said:

"Allah has cursed the lady who artificially lengthens (her or someone else's) hair, and also the one who gets her hair lengthened." Sahih Al-Bukhari Hadith 7.817, narrated by Aisha.

About your question:

When Mu`awiyah came to Al-Madinah, he delivered a sermon to us and get out a ball of hair and said:

“I thought that no one wear this except the Jews.” When the news of this act was conveyed to the Messenger of Allah, he called it, “falsehood” Narrated in Saheeh Bukhari and Muslim. Narrated by Sa`id ibn Al-Musayyib in Muslim.

Thus the Jews use to wear wigs and it is imitating the Kuffar.

Source:Startastro Blogspot

Answer 2

-A lot of Jewish women wear wigs, because of religious reasons. They hide their hair, with a scarf, a sheitel, or a wig.

Sheitel (...) is the Yiddish word for a wig or half-wig worn by some Orthodox Jewish married women in order to conform with the requirement of Jewish Law to cover their hair. This practice is part of the modesty-related dress standard called tzniut.

Source: wikipedia "Sheitel".

-For the non-religious part, if the wig is well-made, normally, you don't now the person wears a wig, so you probably can't say how many people you meet wearing a wig.

We don't know the amount of muslim women wearing wigs, among those who doesn't wear the hijab, as not everybody agrees on the modalities of the interdiction, some says it's only for real human hair, some islamic scholar says it's not lawful (but even more when wigs are made of real human hair) based on:

“Allah has cursed the woman who adds hair extensions and the woman who asks for it to be done.” [Sahîh al-Bukhârî (5934) and Sahîh Muslim (2122)]

The exception being when the women lose her hair making them bald.

Wigs made of human hair are permitted when there is a real need for them, like if a woman's hair falls out all of the sudden or if she is naturally bald. In this case, she is covering up a substantial and abnormal blemish in her appearance.

The permissibility for this can be gleaned from the permission the Prophet (peace be upon him) gave to Arfajah b. Sad to wear a gold nose after his real nose was cut off in battle. [Sunan Abî Dâwûd (3696) – authenticated by al-Albânî in al-Silsilah al-Sahîhah (18 65)]

Source: http://en.islamtoday.net/quesshow-28-829.htm

-For the historical part, we don't really know who were the people who wore wigs, as it doesn't seem to be precised, and there are no historical evidence for a particular people, probably a lot of people. The fact there are Islamic restrictions that doesn't exist in some other religions, make it "imitating".

There's another question arising here: hijab with wig, is it compatible? I don't know, but this question looks interesting.