Whom One May Not Marry, and the Verse Misused for Mutʿah

Finally, the last discussion returns to marriage, since this concerns men: with whom marriage is permitted and with whom it is not. Hence the final verse — Allah (swt) says in verse 23, the last verse of the juzʾ:

Prohibited to you are your mothers, your daughters, your sisters, your maternal and paternal aunts, and your nieces on both sides. It then goes on to milk mothers, those who suckled you, and milk sisters — the daughter of the woman who nursed you. Then it speaks of what becomes ḥarām through marriage, through in-laws. Very detailed, again. That discussion continues into the next verse, the first verse of the fifth juzʾ, wa-l-muḥṣanātu mina al-nisāʾ; which is why, generally, whoever reads to the end of the fourth juzʾ does well to carry on and read the first verse of the fifth, for the theme is the same and the passage continues unbroken. The last verse here is wa-an tajmaʿū bayna al-ukhtayni illā mā qad salaf, inna Allāha kāna ghafūran raḥīmā: Allah (swt) is All-Forgiving and All-Merciful.

Here Allah (swt) says that this is what is prescribed for you, and that whatever lies beyond what has been mentioned is ḥalāl for you: those women may be married. A few conditions are mentioned. There must be a mahr: a dowry must be given, to show one's seriousness. A marriage payment must be provided.

From these verses, where Allah (swt) says fa-mā istamtaʿtum bihi minhunna fa-ātūhunna ujūrahunna farīḍah — the translation being: whomever among them you take benefit from, whomever you enjoy as husband and wife, give them their payment as an obligation — some have tried, though it is plainly incorrect, to justify and support the idea of mutʿah. The word mutʿah was used in the chapter on Sūrat al-Baqarah, but there in the sense of giving a divorced wife a gift, and it was not gone into in much detail. If a man had married a woman and not consummated the marriage, not come together with her — merely married — and had also not decided upon or stipulated a mahr, a marriage payment, so that it was only a quick nikāḥ, a solemnisation, without their coming together, then, since there was no mahr, he must still give a mutʿah, wujūban. And to any other wife, even one to whom the mahr had been paid, as mentioned in that chapter, a mutʿah must be given, which in that case meant simply a gift — generally a suit of clothes or the like.

Here the concept of mutʿah is different. Since the word mutʿah means an enjoyment, something to be enjoyed, the mutʿah in question is that a man comes to a woman and says: I will marry you temporarily. In essence mutʿah is a temporary marriage — for two days, or two hours; in essence, another word for prostitution. It happens in some countries. There was a BBC documentary about its occurrence in Iraq, since under the Shīʿī school of thought it has some validity, and perhaps even virtue, according to their understanding of this verse. But in Islam, while it may have been permitted early on — in the early period it may have been permitted — there is thereafter a very clear narration in Ibn Mājah and elsewhere that, while this may have been done at the beginning, meaning that there was permission at the beginning, from then until Qiyāmah it has become prohibited. In the Sunnī school, the Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jamāʿah, it is therefore completely prohibited. It is a grave abuse, as the BBC documentary showed — not that everything the BBC shows is good, but it did show the abuse that was taking place. This is not, then, a verse by which the concept of mutʿah, or temporary marriage as such, can be justified.