—he intended that to be included within his oath.
According to the school of Dāwud ibn ʿAlī, Ibn Ḥazm, the Shiʿa, and others, however, nothing at all is incurred; they regard swearing and making pledges by divorce to be idle oaths, maintaining that a true oath is not binding unless it is sworn by Allah.
An Imām (1) in our own day has held that anyone who swears—whether to compel or to prevent—by invoking divorce, manumission, pilgrimage, or the like, must simply pay the expiation for a broken oath, and no divorce takes effect.
Ibn Jarīr said in his book al-Tabsīr fī Maʿālim al-Dīn: “With respect to those divine attributes whose knowledge reaches us by transmitted report, such as His—exalted is He—statement that He is All-Hearing, All-Seeing; that He has two hands, as in His words, ‘Rather, both His hands are outstretched’ (Q 5:64); that He has a face, as in His words, ‘And the Face of your Lord will remain’ (Q 55:27); that He laughs, as related in the hadith, ‘He met Allah and He laughs toward him’ (2); and that He descends to the lowest heaven, as reported from His Messenger (3)—he said …"
(1) The person meant is Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyya. A marginal note in the original manuscript states: “This imam erred in the view he adopted, was therefore declared an innovator, had restrictions placed on him, and was imprisoned more than once until he died. A number of leading scholars have transmitted consensus on the issue in opposition to his position, and several critical scholars refuted him. Allah alone grants success.”
(2) The hadith is found in the two Sahih collections; the author will cite its full wording on p. 562 of the present volume.
(3) The hadith is reported by: Malik, al-Muwatta, 1/214 (Book of Qur’an Recitation, chapter on supplication); al-Bukhari, 3/2526 (Book of Night Prayer, chapter on supplication and prayer at the end of the night), 11/1110 (Book of Supplications, chapter on supplication at midnight), and 13/389 (Book of Tawhid, chapter on the verse: “They desire to change the words of Allah”); Muslim, no. 758 (Book of Prayer for Travelers, chapter on encouraging supplication and remembrance in the last part of the night); al-Tirmidhi, no. 3498; and Abu Dawud, no. 1315—all through the chain of Ibn Shihab, from Abu Salama ibn Abd al-Rahman and from Abu Abd Allah al-Agharr, from Abu Hurayra. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “Our Lord descends each night to the lowest heaven when the last third of the night remains and says: ‘Who is calling on Me so that I may answer him? Who is asking of Me so that I may give to him? Who is seeking My forgiveness so that I may forgive him?’” Shaykh al-Islam provided a detailed exposition of this hadith in his book Hadith al-Nuzul, which has been published.