ibn Hanbal: “If he does so, he is to be put to death.” He was then asked, “But has not so-and-so reported a contrary view from Mālik?” He replied, “So-and-so is lying.”

A number of scholars reported from him that a child born of illicit intercourse is attributed to his biological father if the latter acknowledges him as his child, and that ‘Umar ibn al-Khattāb “affiliated”—that is, attributed—the children born in pre-Islamic times to their fathers. The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“The child belongs to the marital bed, and the fornicator has no claim.”

This applies when the woman has a husband. As for a “prostitute” who has no husband, scholars disagree over whether the man who committed illicit intercourse with her may establish the child’s lineage by acknowledging him.

According to the overwhelming majority of scholars, the “daughter of a woman who has undergone mutual imprecation” is not lawful in marriage to the man who invoked it. Only an isolated dissenting view exists, even though her lineage is severed from her father. Yet if he were to acknowledge her as his child, her lineage would be attributed to him. The two do not inherit from one another, by agreement of the imams.

This is because the rulings concerning “lineage” are separable: a man may be considered someone’s son for some rulings but not others. Thus, the son of a woman who has undergone mutual imprecation is not treated as a son in matters of inheritance: he neither inherits from his father nor does his father inherit from him. Yet he is a son under “marriage law”: the daughter of a woman who has undergone mutual imprecation is forbidden in marriage to her father.

Allah, Glorified and Exalted, has forbidden through breastfeeding the same marriages that He has forbidden through lineage. A man may therefore marry neither his daughter nor his sister through breastfeeding, even though none of the “rulings concerning lineage”—inheritance, blood-money obligations, guardianship, maintenance, or anything else—apply to her. What applies to her is only the prohibition of marriage and mahram status. The “Mothers of the Believers” are mothers only with respect to the prohibition of marriage, not mahram status.

Thus, if a girl whom his wife breastfed with milk resulting from his intercourse with her is forbidden in marriage to him, even though she is not attributed to him for inheritance or other purposes, what then of a girl created from his own semen? Her connection to him is stronger than that of the former. And His words, Most High, in the Quran