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

A man adopted the doctrine of “circularity” attributed to Ibn Surayj. He then swore, on pain of divorce, that he would not do something, but subsequently did it. He later abandoned that doctrine and took his wife back. After that, he swore, on pain of threefold divorce, that he would not do something. He subsequently said to his wife, “You are divorced.” Does a threefold divorce take effect in his case, or may he invoke the first doctrine mentioned?

He replied:

The “Surayjī doctrine” is invalid in Islam. It is an innovation on which none of the Companions, the Successors, or their followers ever issued a fatwa. It was only put forward by a group of jurists after the third century AH, and the majority of Muslim jurists rejected it. Their rejection is correct, for the invalidity of what its proponents said is evident in several respects.

One is that it is a self-evident teaching of Islam that Allah has permitted divorce just as He has permitted marriage, and that the religion of the Muslims differs from that of the Christians, who do not permit divorce. If there were anything in the religion of the Muslims that made divorce impossible, their religion would become like that of the Christians.