who embraced Islam while married to two sisters, to choose one and part with the other.” Likewise, the Companions instructed those Magians who embraced Islam “to separate from wives within the prohibited degrees of kinship.”

For this reason, the Muslims agree that contracts concluded by unbelievers are deemed valid after they embrace Islam, provided those contracts are not forbidden to Muslims, even though the unbelievers did not conclude them with the Lawgiver’s permission. Had they regarded contracts as being like acts of worship, valid only when sanctioned by revelation, they would have deemed them invalid—or at least deemed invalid those contracts whose parties had not adhered to a revealed law in concluding them.

If it is said:

The hadith jurists and the scholars of the Hijaz agree that, if these contracts were concluded in a manner forbidden in Islam, but the parties then embraced Islam after the grounds for that prohibition had ceased to exist, the contracts stand and the parties are not instructed to conclude them anew. This is because Islam effaces what came before it. Contracts they concluded without revealed sanction therefore stand on no lower footing than those they concluded despite a revealed prohibition; in your view, the two are alike.

We reply:

That is not so. Rather, contracts they concluded despite a prohibition are deemed valid only if possession was taken in connection with them. If, however, they embrace Islam before the exchange of possession, the contract is rescinded. This differs from contracts they concluded without revealed sanction, which are not rescinded, whether before or after possession is taken.

I have not seen the jurists of our school or others require consummation in the case of marriage. Rather, they treat embracing Islam before consummation and after it alike. This is because the marriage contract itself establishes legal effects, such as ties of affinity and the like, even if the marriage has not been consummated. Similarly, intercourse itself establishes legal effects even without marriage. Since both the contract and intercourse are intended in their own right—even when neither is accompanied by the other—they were allowed to continue