by serving him, he will instead be forced to serve her in her own home. That would effectively make her the one in charge of him—an inversion of the Qur’ānic decree, as is plain to see. It is therefore established that the wife must serve her husband; that is the point at issue.

Furthermore, if the husband shoulders the household work himself, two mutually contradictory consequences follow. First, he becomes preoccupied with those chores and is distracted from earning a livelihood and other necessary pursuits. Second, the wife remains at home idle, free of any duty she is meant to undertake. The corruption of such an arrangement in the Sharīʿah is obvious: the law equalizes the spouses in rights yet grants the husband a degree above her. For this reason the Messenger of Allah ﷺ continued to hear the complaint of his daughter Fāṭimah (may Allah be pleased with her) when she came to the Prophet ﷺ complaining about the blisters on her hand from turning the millstone. She had heard that some servants had reached him, but she did not find him present; she therefore mentioned the matter to ʿĀʾishah. When he returned, ʿĀʾishah told him. ʿAlī (may Allah be pleased with him) said: He came to us after we had already taken our beds. We were about to rise, but he said, “Stay where you are.” He then sat down between me and her until I felt the coolness of his feet upon my stomach, and he said, “Shall I not direct the two of you to something better than what you have asked for? When you lie down to sleep—or whenever you retire to your bed—then glorify Allah thirty-three times, praise Him thirty-three times,