meant it, should he make such a claim, according to the view that divorce does not become binding through mere pronouncement unless accompanied by intention.
As for divorce subject to a qualification, it takes two forms: one uses conditional wording, while the other uses wording that declares it binding. When conditional wording is used—for example, “My wife is divorced if I do such-and-such,” or “if I do not do it”—the jurists figuratively call this an oath involving divorce, because it shares an aspect of an oath by Allah Most High: divorce becomes binding when the condition is met, just as expiation becomes obligatory upon someone who breaks an oath sworn by Allah Most High. Both thus share the intention of refraining from whatever would entail divorce or expiation, rather than intending divorce or expiation itself.
Another similarity is that it becomes binding concerning future events, just as oaths by Allah Most High do. When it concerns the past, it [either takes effect or does not, like an oath by Allah concerning the past], which is either an inadvertent oath or one sworn truthfully, requiring no expiation, or a deliberately false oath too grave to be expiated. A person sins if he swears concerning something unknown to him, swears falsely, or swears while in doubt, just as he sins when swearing by Allah concerning any of these things. Yet this is not an oath in the literal sense. An oath by divorce in the literal sense is a man’s saying, “By the sanctity of divorce, I will not do such-and-such.”
Section
The Different Forms of Oaths Involving Divorce
Such an oath—I mean an oath involving divorce in the figurative sense already explained—falls into three categories: the first concerns the person swearing it; the second concerns someone else; and the third concerns a matter hidden from him.
The first, an oath involving divorce concerning the person himself, takes two forms. One is to swear that he will not perform an act, saying, “My wife is divorced if I do such-and-such.” The other is to swear that he will perform an act, saying, “My wife is divorced if I do not do such-and-such.”
The first form, swearing by divorce not to perform an act, involves one of three possibilities. The first is that the act is something he is capable of doing