Sixth: Some hadiths containing warnings explicitly address the very case under dispute, such as the curse upon the man for whose benefit a woman is married to another man to make her lawful again for him. Some scholars maintain that this man incurs no sin whatsoever. He was in no way a party to the first marriage contract, so it cannot be said that he was cursed for believing that the arrangement had to be fulfilled. Whoever holds that the first man’s marriage is valid even though the condition is void, and that the woman therefore becomes lawful for the second man, absolves the second man of sin.

Indeed, the same reasoning applies to the intermediary husband. He is cursed either for making her lawful again for her former husband, solely for believing that the condition attached to the marriage contract must be fulfilled, or for both together. If it is the first or the third, our point is established. If it is the second, then this belief is what incurs the curse, whether or not any such arrangement takes place. In that case, what the hadith mentions would not be the cause of the curse, while the actual cause would go unmentioned. This is untenable.

Furthermore, if the person who believes that the condition must be fulfilled is ignorant, no curse falls upon him. If he knows that fulfilling it is not obligatory, it is impossible for him to believe it obligatory unless he is deliberately defying the Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, in which case he would be a disbeliever. The hadith would thus amount to a curse upon disbelievers. Yet disbelief is not confined to denying this particular ruling rather than another. This would be equivalent to saying:

“May Allah curse anyone who accuses the Messenger of falsehood in his ruling that a condition requiring divorce in a marriage contract is void.”

Moreover, this statement is general in both wording and meaning; it is general from the outset. General language of this kind cannot be restricted to rare cases, for that would render the statement inarticulate