child found the garment open—or perhaps she herself played with it until it came open—and then nursed. Yet breastfeeding requires five separate feedings. One might therefore say: this little girl crawls over and nurses each morning for five days, until the required number is completed!

“After consummation, her dowry remains due in full. If someone other than her causes the marriage to be invalidated, then she is entitled from the husband to half of the stipulated dowry before consummation and all of it after consummation; the husband may then recover it from the one who caused the invalidation. Whoever says to his wife, ‘You are my sister through breastfeeding,’ the marriage is invalidated, …”

His statement, “After consummation, her dowry remains due in full,” means that if the woman invalidates her marriage through breastfeeding after consummation, she is entitled to the dowry, since it became binding through consummation, based on the Prophet’s statement: “She is entitled to the dowry in return for the intimacy he made lawful with her.” (1)

Shaykh al-Islam said: If she invalidates it after consummation, she is not entitled to any dowry—not because it had not become binding, but by way of compensation. For when she deprived her husband of herself, she became liable to compensate him with the dowry. There is no doubt that this view is strong. Thus, the husband may say, for example: “You invalidated the marriage, and your value is the dowry; so give me its value.”

His statement, “If someone other than her causes the marriage to be invalidated, then she is entitled from the husband to half of the stipulated dowry before consummation and all of it after consummation; the husband may then recover it from the one who caused the invalidation,” means that if someone other than the wife invalidates the marriage, then before consummation the wife is entitled to half, whereas after