The first principle is this: the very notion of ẓihār implies that the expiation becomes obligatory only when the husband intends to go back to what he has made unlawful to himself by that pronouncement—namely, sexual intercourse. Consequently, the “return” must be either the act of intercourse itself or a firm resolve and intention to engage in it.

The second principle is that the return cannot itself be intercourse, because the Almighty says, “Then he must free a slave before the two of them touch one another” (al-Mujādilah 58:3). Intercourse, therefore, remains forbidden until the expiation is discharged. They add: were the return identical with merely keeping the marriage intact, ẓihār would, by prohibiting that very keeping, amount to a form of divorce—which is untenable.

In sum, their reasoning relies on what jurists call the method of investigation and division (sabr wa-taqsīm): the word “return” must refer to one of four possibilities—repeating the formula, as Dāwūd holds; the act of intercourse itself; mere marital maintenance; or the intention to have intercourse. It cannot be repetition of the words, for that is only emphasis, and emphasis does not impose an expiation. Nor can it be the bare intention to keep the marriage for intercourse, for the state of keeping already persists. What remains is the intention to have intercourse—and once one intends to keep her for that purpose, he has, in effect, intended intercourse. Thus they conclude that the return is intercourse.

The Shāfiʿīs, when they treat the intention to maintain the marriage—or the maintenance itself—as equivalent to intending intercourse, do so because intercourse normally follows from maintenance; they regard the necessary consequence as analogous to the thing itself and assign both the same ruling. This is close to Mālik’s second report. The Shāfiʿīs further argue that the duty of expiation is tied to the intention to keep the wife, since the obligation lapses when that keeping ceases, as in the case of an immediate divorce after ẓihār. For this reason Mālik, in his second report, exercised caution and defined the return as the joint intention to do both—to have intercourse and to maintain the marriage.

As for the view that the return is the act of intercourse itself, it is weak and contradicts the explicit text; its proponents rely on an analogy that likens ẓihār to an oath—just as an oath-expiation becomes due only upon breaking the oath—yet this resemblance-based analogy is overridden by the verse.

Dāwūd, on the other hand, clings to the literal wording of the verse, “then they return to what they said” (al-Mujādilah 58:3), which, taken at face value, means returning to the very statement itself. Abū Ḥanīfah understands it as their returning, within Islam, to the ẓihār they practised in pre-Islamic days. Mālik and al-Shāfiʿī read the verse as meaning “then they return regarding what they said.”

The crux of the dispute, then, is the tension between the apparent wording and the inferred meaning. Whoever favours the inferred meaning defines the return as the intention to have intercourse or to keep the marriage, and construes the preposition lām in the phrase “then they return li-mā qālū” as though it were the particle fa. Whoever follows the literal wording makes the return the repetition of the formula, holding that this second return simply mirrors the first that existed in the pre-Islamic period.

Anyone who adopts either of these two literal readings would more consistently maintain—like Mujāhid—that expiation is required by the mere utterance of ẓihār, unless he posits an unexpressed element in the verse, namely the intention to keep the marriage.

In the end, three opinions emerge: that the return is the repetition of the wording; that it is the intention to keep the wife; or that it is the return that takes place under Islam. These last two—that is, the first and the third—are themselves divided into two categories: