whereupon the Messenger of God—peace and blessings be upon him—ordered him to make a single expiation.

Some scholars, however, hold that two expiations are required: one for the mere intention to resume marital relations and another for the actual intercourse, since he engaged in a prohibited act. This view is reported from ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ, Qabīṣah ibn Dhūʾayb, Saʿīd ibn Jubayr, and Ibn Shihāb.

Others have said that nothing at all is incumbent upon him—neither for resumption nor for intercourse—because Allah, exalted is He, made the validity of the expiation conditional on its being offered before sexual contact. Once intercourse has taken place, its appointed time has lapsed, and no expiation can become obligatory unless a new cause arises; such a cause, they argue, is absent in our case. This opinion, however, is considered anomalous.

Abū Muḥammad Ibn Ḥazm states: If a man’s obligation is to feed the poor, intercourse is not forbidden to him before the feeding takes place. The prohibition applies only to one whose obligation is the emancipation of a slave or the observance of fasting.