A Critical Exposition of the Popular 'Jihád'/Chapter 11/88

[Sidenote 88. Marriage a strict bond of union.]

Mohammad had no loose ideas regarding the marriage tie. He had made the marriage contract more firm and irrevocable, except under very exceptional circumstances, than it was under the Arab society; and called it "a strict bond of union." Mohammad's own daughter, Zeinab, was the wife of an unbelieving husband and had fled to her father at Medina under the persecution at Mecca after the Hegira. Her marriage with her unbelieving partner was not cancelled by Mohammad, and on the conversion of the son-in-law, when he came after a period of six years after his wife had come to Medina, Mohammad rejoined them together under their previous marriage. Theirs was neither a fresh marriage nor a fresh dowry. (Vide Ibn Abbas' tradition in the collections of Ahmed, Ibn Abi Daood, Ibn Maja and Trimizee.) Safwan-bin-Omayya and Ikrama-bin Abi Jahl had believing wives at the time of the conquest of Mecca, and their marriages were not dissolved by Mohammad. (Vide Ibn Shahab's tradition in Movatta by Malik, and in the Tabakat of Ibn Sad Katib Wákidi.) Similarly Ibn Sofian and Hakeem-bin-Hizam had their unbelieving wives retained by them after they had themselves been converted to Islam, and their former connubial connection was not severed by Mohammad. (Vide the several traditions in Baihakee to the above effect.) It was only the legists and juris-consults of a later age who wrongly construed the passage in Sura LX, 10, to mean that the unbelief of either party dissolved the marriage tie.