of the Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, authentically reported in al-Bukhari and Muslim: “The conditions most deserving of fulfilment are those by which you made private relations lawful.” (1)

The correct view, therefore, is that the husband and wife—and everyone upon whom a condition has been stipulated—must fulfil it, based on the verses to which we referred and on this authentic hadith. It is astonishing that we deem fulfilment of a condition obligatory in a sales contract involving something worth no more than five dirhams, yet do not deem fulfilment of a condition obligatory in a contract whose consideration is the wife—the object of cultivation—and whose consideration paid is fifty thousand!

Conditions in marriage fall into three categories: valid conditions; invalid conditions that do not invalidate the contract; and invalid conditions that do invalidate it.

The first category: valid conditions. It is known that a valid condition does not affect the contract; thus, the contract remains valid alongside such conditions. They include:

If she stipulates that he divorce her co-wife, or that he not take a concubine, or that he not marry another woman in addition to her.

His statement, “If she stipulates that he divorce her co-wife”: “if” is conditional, and its apodosis is found in the statement, “it is valid.” Thus, if she stipulates that he divorce her co-wife, the condition is valid and the contract is valid. For example, a man proposes to someone for his daughter, and he says, “There is no objection, but on condition that you divorce your wife.” We say: this condition is valid, because the wife who stipulates that he divorce her co-wife has an objective in doing so: that she may have him to herself. This is undoubtedly a legitimate objective for women, and everyone knows that women love for their husbands to be exclusively theirs; thus, this is a valid objective.