the husband’s right is also a firmly established duty upon his wife. Your father has a right over you, and your husband has a right over you; what is incumbent on you is to give each person the right that is due to him. Since you mention that a dispute has arisen between them and you are unsure whose side to take, you must side with the truth. If your husband is in the right and your father in the wrong, then you must stand with your husband and advise your father. If the opposite is true—your father is right and your husband mistaken—then you must stand with your father and counsel your husband. In every case your obligation is to stand with the truth and to give sincere advice to whichever of them is at fault. That is how you should position yourself toward your father and your husband in their disagreement.

Do your best to reconcile them, so that you may be a key to good and a barrier against evil. If, through your efforts, this rift and discord are removed, you will be rewarded, for reconciling between people—especially between relatives—is one of the greatest acts of obedience. Allah, Exalted is He, says: “There is no good in much of their secret counsel except for whoever enjoins charity, kindness, or reconciliation between people” (al-Nisāʾ 114).

Our advice to both parties is that they must fear Allah, deal with one another in the spirit of Islamic brotherhood, and remember the bonds of kinship and marriage that unite them. Each should overlook and pardon the other, for this is the way of the Muslims. They must not be driven by caprice or by Satan; seek refuge with Allah from Satan’s insinuations.

As for the ḥadīth, “If I were to command anyone to prostrate to another besides Allah…,” it is, as far as I know, authentic. Concerning the second report, I do not know its grading. Nonetheless, the meaning we have stated remains sound: a wife is obliged to obey her husband in what is reasonable.