Book of Ẓihār

Ẓihār may be effected by any legally competent husband, even if he is a non-Muslim living under Muslim rule (dhimmī) or a eunuch, and a pronouncement made while intoxicated is treated just like his divorce.

The explicit wording is for him to say to his wife, “You are to me (or: from me, with me, in my regard) like my mother’s back.” Simply saying, “You are like my mother’s back” is likewise an explicit form according to the stronger view. His statement, “Your body, your flesh, or your very self is like my mother’s body (or flesh, or whole person),” is also explicit. The preponderant opinion counts as Ẓihār his saying, “like her hand, her belly, or her chest,” and likewise “like her eye” provided he intends Ẓihār; but if he means mere veneration, or leaves the words unqualified, then—on the sounder view—no Ẓihār occurs. So too his saying, “Your head, your back, or your hand is to me like my mother’s back” constitutes Ẓihār on the preferred position.

Likening a wife to one’s grandmother is Ẓihār, and the school extends this ruling to every woman who is permanently unlawful to him, so long as her prohibition is original and not the result of a later contingency—hence it does not apply to a wet-nurse or to a son’s wife. If he likens her to an unrelated woman, a woman he has divorced, his wife’s sister, a man, or a woman with whom he has exchanged mutual imprecation (liʿān), his words are meaningless.

Ẓihār may be made conditional. Thus, if he says to one wife, “If I perform Ẓihār regarding my other wife, then you are to me like my mother’s back,” and thereafter utters Ẓihār, he is deemed to have committed it with respect to both of them. If he says, “If I perform Ẓihār from So-and-so,” and she is at that point an unrelated stranger, then addresses her with words of Ẓihār, he does not become subject to Ẓihār with respect to his own wife—unless he meant merely the utterance of the formula itself. Should he later marry that woman and pronounce Ẓihār with regard to her, he becomes subject to it, and the same applies if his original condition named her specifically while she was still a stranger. Another opinion, however, holds that he does not become subject to Ẓihār even if he subsequently marries and pronounces the formula. A statement such as “If I perform Ẓihār from her,” while she remains a stranger, is pure nonsense.

If he declares to his wife, “You are divorced—like my mother’s back,” and entertains no specific intention, or intends only divorce, or only Ẓihār, or both together, the divorce takes effect and she is irrevocably separated. Should he intend the phrase “like my mother’s back” to serve as the divorce formula, she is divorced and no Ẓihār arises. But if he means “you are divorced” to effect the divorce and assigns Ẓihār to the remaining words, then she is divorced and Ẓihār also takes effect, provided the divorce is revocable.