who were ungrateful. It was asked: ‘Ungrateful to Allah?’ He replied: ‘They are ungrateful to their husbands and ungrateful for kindness.’”

Allah thus states that none does this except a man who commits unlawful sexual intercourse or a polytheist. The polytheist has no faith to restrain him from sexual immorality and associating with those who practise it. As for the man who commits unlawful sexual intercourse, his immorality draws him to this, even though he is not a polytheist.

The verse also indicates that a man who commits unlawful sexual intercourse is not a believer in the unqualified sense, even though he is not a disbelieving polytheist. As stated in the authentic hadith:

“A man who commits unlawful sexual intercourse is not a believer while committing it.”

This is because Allah states that such a man marries none but a woman who commits unlawful sexual intercourse or a polytheist woman. Then He, Most High, says:

“That is forbidden to the believers.”

We therefore know that faith prevents and restrains a person from this, and that whoever does it is either a polytheist or a man who commits unlawful sexual intercourse and is not among those believers whose faith prevents them from doing so.

This is because a woman who commits unlawful sexual intercourse defiles a man’s marriage bed, and marrying her entails continually living with an immoral woman and keeping her company. Allah has commanded that evil and those who practise it be shunned as long as they persist in it. The same consideration applies to a man who commits unlawful sexual intercourse: if he does not defile his wife’s marriage bed, he is nevertheless an evil companion for her. As al-Shaʿbī said: “Whoever marries his cherished daughter to an openly sinful man has severed her ties of kinship.” This exposes a woman to harm in both her religious and worldly life.

Marrying a woman who commits unlawful sexual intercourse is therefore more harmful with respect to the marriage bed, whereas marrying a man who commits it is more harmful in that he is the woman’s master, her possessor, and the one who rules over her. Thus a free, chaste woman remains captive to an immoral man who commits unlawful sexual intercourse