he believed to be his free wife or a slave woman whom he owned. His child by her is therefore free on account of his belief, even if that belief was mistaken. This was the ruling of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, and the leading scholars of the Muslims agreed upon it.

As for these men who had intercourse and fathered children, even if they had done so within marriages unanimously held to be invalid, and their divorces had taken effect by unanimous agreement of the Muslims, yet they had intercourse believing that their marriages remained in force—because of a ruling someone had given them or for some other reason—the children would be attributed to them and would not be children of fornication. Rather, fathers and children would inherit from one another, by unanimous agreement of the Muslims. If this applies where the marriage is unanimously held to be invalid, how much more so where its invalidity is disputed?

This holds even when the opinion on which a man relied in having intercourse was weak, as in the case of a temporary marriage or a marriage contracted by a woman on her own behalf without a guardian or witnesses. If he has intercourse within such a union believing it to be a marriage, the child is attributed to him. How much more so, then, in a disputed marriage whose validity has been clearly supported by the Quran, the Sunnah, and legal analogy, when thorough examination has revealed the weakness of the opposing view and its proponents’ inability to defend it, for lack of any proof recognized by Islamic law?

Whoever says that a child born of this marriage, or one like it, is a child of fornication, and that the child and the father who had intercourse cannot inherit from one another, contradicts the consensus of the Muslims and has forfeited his standing in religion. If he is ignorant, he must be instructed and have it explained to him that the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—his Rightly Guided Caliphs, and all the other leading scholars of the religion attributed the children of the people of the pre-Islamic era to their fathers, even though their marriages were forbidden by unanimous agreement. They did not make attribution of paternity conditional upon the marriage being permissible under Islamic law. If he persists in opposing the Messenger after