He—may Allah Most High have mercy on him—was asked about someone who said:

“If a man has anal intercourse with a divorced woman, she becomes lawful again for her former husband.” Is this correct or not?

He replied:

This is a false claim that contradicts the well-known imams of the Muslims and other Muslim imams. The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said to a woman who had been divorced three times:

“No, not until you taste his sweetness and he tastes yours.”

This explicitly states that such sweetness is indispensable. It is not attained through anal intercourse, and no disagreement on this is known. As for the view attributed to some Mālikī scholars—an attribution they themselves dispute—and the report from Sa‘īd ibn al-Musayyab that intercourse is not a prerequisite, no mention is made there of anal intercourse. It is an anomalous view contradicted by the authentic Sunnah, and consensus was established both before and after it.

The shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—said:

“Marrying a woman who has committed unlawful sexual intercourse” is forbidden until she repents, whether her partner in that act was the prospective husband or someone else. This is undoubtedly the correct view. It is the position of a group of earlier and later scholars, including