This is comparable to how, when people began drinking wine frequently and treating its prescribed punishment lightly, Umar would impose eighty lashes, banishment, and shaving of the head—measures not practiced during the lifetime of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. Likewise, Ali fought some of those who faced the same direction in prayer, something that had not occurred during the Prophet’s lifetime, peace and blessings be upon him.

Separating spouses was also among the punishments they sometimes imposed, either while leaving the marriage bond intact or by dissolving it. The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, separated the three men whose case had been deferred from their wives until Allah accepted their repentance, without any divorce taking place. A man who divorces his wife three times is forbidden to remarry her until she marries another husband, as a punishment intended to deter him from divorce. Umar ibn al-Khattāb and those who agreed with him, such as Mālik and Ahmad according to one of the two reports from him, held that a woman married during her waiting period became permanently forbidden to the man who married her. Because he had hastened to obtain what Allah had made lawful, he was punished with the opposite of what he intended.

According to most of the early scholars, the two arbiters may separate the spouses without compensation if they judge the husband to be unjust and abusive, since this restrains his wrongdoing and protects the wife from harm. This is supported by the Quran, the Sunnah, and reports from the early generations. It is Mālik’s position and one of the two views within the schools of al-Shāfiʿī and Ahmad.

When Umar made all three divorces binding after people began pronouncing them frequently, he may have regarded this as a punishment to be applied when needed. Alternatively, he may have regarded it as a binding legal ruling, believing that the concession had applied when Muslims pronounced such divorces only rarely.

Similarly, people have differed in explaining his prohibition of performing umrah followed by Hajj on the same journey: was he merely discouraging it as a matter of preference, because making a separate journey for Hajj and another for umrah was better than combining them in one journey? Or had he prohibited converting Hajj into umrah because he believed that this had been exclusively permitted to the Companions? In either case, the Companions had