thus treating what is zihār as divorce. This increases the incidence of divorce, which Allah and His Messenger detest. People must then either endure what is displeasing or end it through something even more displeasing to Allah and His Messenger: a marriage arranged to make the woman lawful again for her former husband.
The divorce prescribed by Allah and His Messenger is for a man who wishes to divorce his wife to pronounce a single divorce during a period of purity in which he has not had intercourse with her, or when her pregnancy is evident. He then leaves her to wait for three cycles. If he wishes to remain with her, he takes her back during the waiting period; otherwise, he releases her with kindness. If he subsequently decides to marry her again, he does so through a new marriage contract. Thereafter, if he wishes to take her back or remarry her, he may do so; if he wishes to divorce her, he divorces her. This is the prescribed divorce in accordance with the Sunnah. Anyone who divorces only in accordance with the Sunnah has no need to resort to what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, such as a marriage arranged to make her lawful again, or anything else.
Rather, if he divorces her three times, each divorce allowing him to take her back or enter into a new marriage contract, she then becomes unlawful to him until she marries another husband. Under no circumstances may she return to him through a marriage arranged to make her lawful again. Indeed:
“The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, cursed the man who marries for this purpose and the man for whose benefit he does so.”
His Companions, including his rightly guided caliphs, and others agreed on this. There is no known instance in Islam of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, or any of his caliphs or Companions ever returning a thrice-divorced woman to her husband after such an arranged marriage. Nor was this practice openly conducted during the Prophet’s lifetime, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. Rather, anyone who did it acted secretly, and even the woman and her guardian might not know. The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, cursed “the man who marries for this purpose and the man for whose benefit he does so.”
Regarding usury, he said:
“Allah has cursed the one who consumes usury, the one who pays it, its two witnesses, and its scribe.”
He thus cursed the scribe and the witnesses because people used to call witnesses to usurious debts, whereas they did not call witnesses to marriages arranged to make a woman lawful again for her former husband.