the one who practises it in several hadiths, calling him “the borrowed billy goat,” and said:

“May Allah curse the man who performs tahlīl and the man for whose benefit it is performed.”

Likewise, well-known reports from ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, ʿAlī, Ibn ʿUmar and others explicitly state that anyone who inwardly intends tahlīl is performing it, even if he does not stipulate it in the marriage contract. They called it “fornication.” Such a contract does not make her lawful again for the husband who first divorced her. Nor may the husband who performs tahlīl retain her as his wife on the basis of this arrangement; rather, he must separate from her. However, if the former husband had concluded that this was permissible, whether through independent legal reasoning or by following a scholarly opinion, and she underwent tahlīl and he subsequently married her, then later he came to recognize that this was forbidden, the stronger view is that he is not required to separate from her. Rather, he is to be prevented from doing this in the future, while Allah has pardoned what occurred in the past.

He—may Allah Most High have mercy on him—was asked:

“An upright imam divorced his wife, and she remained with him in his house until she underwent tahlīl as practised by the people of Egypt, after which he married her.”

He replied:

If a man marries a woman intending to divorce her after having intercourse with her, so as to make her lawful again for her former husband, or if the two agree to this before the marriage contract, or stipulate it in the contract itself—explicitly or by custom—then this and its various forms constitute the ‘marriage for tahlīl’ whose invalidity the Muslim community has unanimously affirmed. It is authentically established that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“May Allah curse the man who performs tahlīl and the man for whose benefit it is performed.”