Allah sent His Messenger—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—(1) and revealed His Book. [We have already mentioned some of their practices (2) that are among the matters most manifestly objectionable according to both revealed law and reason] (3). They also espouse false doctrines (4), even though some early authorities agreed with them (5) on these matters. These include permitting temporary marriage; holding that a divorce made conditional upon something does not take effect, even when it was intended to take effect upon fulfilment of that condition; holding that divorce does not take effect through indirect expressions (6); and requiring it to be witnessed.

Third: It may be said that the jurists who held these views had grounds for doing so, even though the majority of jurists considered them mistaken. Ahl al-Sunnah themselves affirm that these views are mistaken (7). Thus, the clarification of the correct position does not lie outside their ranks, just as the correct position itself does not lie outside them (8). Accordingly, the majority—including Abū Hanīfah, Ahmad, and Mālik according to the more evident of the two reports from him—hold that female offspring conceived through a man’s illicit intercourse are forbidden to him in marriage. This has also been related as one view of al-Shāfiī (9).