take her back before she married another husband.

May he do so on the grounds that the first marriage was invalid, without the prescribed punishment being waived, while the dowry is obligatory, paternity is established, and the legal status associated with a consummated marriage is attained?

He replied:

No prescribed punishment is due for this marriage if he believed it to be valid. Rather, paternity is established through it and the dowry is obligatory. An invalid marriage, however, does not confer the legal status associated with a consummated marriage. Divorce takes effect in a marriage whose validity is disputed if he believed it to be valid. But if it becomes clear that the man who contracted the marriage had no authority to do so whatsoever, and the husband separates from her upon learning this, pronouncing three divorces, no divorce takes effect in these circumstances. He may marry her without her first marrying another husband.

Shaykh al-Islām—may Allah have mercy on him—was asked:

A man married a woman two years ago and then divorced her three times. Her marriage guardian was openly sinful. Is a marriage contracted by such a guardian valid, so that, if she is divorced three times, she is not lawful for him until she has married someone else? Or is the marriage he contracted invalid, allowing the husband to marry her under a new contract with a rightly guided guardian, without her first marrying another man?

He replied:

Praise be to Allah. If he has divorced her three times, the divorce has taken effect. After three divorces, no one may investigate whether the guardian was upright or openly sinful in order to use the guardian’s sinfulness as a pretext for claiming that the divorce did not take effect, for most