Thus, we know that people of this sort would not incur the stated threat were they to perform the intervening taḥlīl marriage while sincerely believing it lawful in that manner.

Yet this does not prevent us from affirming that the taḥlīl arrangement is, in itself, a cause for the threat, even if the threat fails to attach to certain individuals because a requisite condition is missing or a legal impediment exists.

A similar case is Muʿāwiyah’s—may Allah be pleased with him—affiliation of Ziyād ibn Abīhi, who had been born on the marital bed of al-Hārith ibn Kildah, on the grounds that Abū Sufyān used to claim the child was from his own seed, even though the Prophet ﷺ said: “Whoever attributes himself to someone other than his father while knowing that he is not his father, Paradise is forbidden to him” (1); and he said: “Whoever claims descent from someone other than his father, or allies himself with people other than his patrons, upon him is the curse of Allah, the angels, and all mankind; Allah will accept from him neither a ransom nor an equivalent” (2)—an authentic hadith. He also ruled that “The child is to be attributed to the marital bed,” a judgment on which there is unanimous consensus.

Accordingly, we know that anyone who ascribes his lineage to someone other than the father who owns the marital bed falls under the Prophet’s words ﷺ. Nevertheless, it is impermissible to single out any given person—much less one of the Companions—and assert that this threat applies to him,