Three divorces and the one-night marriage: 6 points from the sources

The Quran says “Divorce is twice. Then [after that], either keep [her] in an acceptable manner or release [her] with good treatment” (2:229). A divorced woman waits three periods, during which “their husbands have more right to take them back in this [period] if they want reconciliation” (2:228).^[1] The husband may divorce, and he may take his wife back within the period. After two pronouncements, the choice comes again.

Then comes the third: “And if he has divorced her [for the third time], then she is not lawful to him afterward until [after] she marries a husband other than him. And if he [i.e., the latter husband] divorces her [or dies], there is no blame upon them [i.e., the woman and her former husband] for returning to each other if they think that they can keep [within] the limits of Allah” (2:230).^[2]

The rule is a brake. It makes the third divorce a matter with a cost, so that a man who pronounces it in anger knows that he cannot undo it. It also surrounds the divorce with duties: counting the waiting period, not turning the woman out of the house, keeping to the limits of God (65:1), and not taking the verses “in jest” (2:231).^[3] Verdict: the rule of 2:230 is real, and it is meant as a deterrent.

The Quran says she marries “a husband other than him”. The report that explains the rule concerns a woman whose husband had divorced her by three pronouncements. She married another man, who proved unable to consummate the marriage, and she came to the Prophet ﷺ to say that she wanted to return to the first. He said, “Perhaps you want to return to Rifāʿa? Nay (you cannot return to Rifāʿa) until you and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān consummate your marriage.”^[4] In the version in Muslim, he adds that she must have tasted her second husband’s sweetness as he had tasted hers.^[5]

A reader is entitled to see that this is a hard text. It requires a real marriage, with consummation, between the woman and a husband of her own choosing, and it means that she cannot go back by a formality. It is the text on which the practice described in the account depends, and the account’s author cannot be blamed for noticing it.

But the report concerns a woman who chose the second marriage and then wished to leave it. It is not a rule that a third party may arrange a night. The next entry sets out what the Prophet ﷺ said about that arrangement. Verdict: the second marriage has to be real. It has to be a marriage in fact.

The Prophet ﷺ cursed the man who does it. In the report from ʿAlī in Abū Dāwūd, he said, “Curse be upon the one who marries a divorced woman with the intention of making her lawful for her former husband and upon the one for whom she is made lawful.”^[6] The same curse is reported in al-Tirmidhī from Jābir and ʿAlī and from Ibn Masʿūd.^[7] In Ibn Mājah, ʿUqba ibn ʿĀmir reports that he said, “Shall I not tell you of a borrowed billy goat?” and named him as the muḥallil, the one who makes lawful, and said that God curses him and the one for whom it is done.^[8]

The practice the account describes is therefore a named sin with a curse on both parties. The man who pays and the man who is paid are both under it. The Prophet’s word for the hired husband is an animal borrowed for a purpose. A tradition that calls a practice a loan of a billy goat does not hold it up as law.

The jurists differed on whether a marriage made with that intention is valid. It is stated from general knowledge that some schools held it void and others held it valid but sinful, and this was not checked on a page for this article. On the matter of the practice they agreed in condemning it. Verdict: no. The paid, pre-arranged night is the thing cursed.

A woman in the sources is not the passive party in this account. She married the second husband by choice, and she may refuse to return to the first. She also has a way to leave a husband she dislikes. In al-Bukhari, the wife of Thābit ibn Qays came to the Prophet ﷺ and said she did not blame her husband for his character or his religion but disliked living with him. The Prophet ﷺ asked whether she would return the garden her husband had given her as dowry, she said yes, and he told Thābit to accept the garden and divorce her once.^[9] This is khulʿ, a divorce initiated by the wife, and 2:229 refers to it when it says there is no blame “concerning that by which she ransoms herself”.^[10]

A concession is due. The classical law gave the husband a right to pronounce divorce without a court, and gave the wife a right of release that depends on return of the dowry or on a judge. The two powers are not equal, and a critic is right to say so. Modern states have legislated on the matter, and in some the wife has wider rights than the classical books gave her. This is stated from general knowledge and was not checked on a page for this article.

The sources make a wife’s consent essential to the second marriage and give her a route out of a marriage she cannot bear. They do not describe a woman handed to a stranger for a night. Verdict: the sources do not support what the account describes.

The account also says that three pronouncements in one sitting end the marriage for good. That is the position of the four Sunni schools today. It is not what the earliest reports show. Ibn ʿAbbās reported that the pronouncement of three divorces in one sitting was treated as one in the Prophet’s time, in Abū Bakr’s, and for two years of ʿUmar’s caliphate. ʿUmar then said that people had been hasty in a matter in which they had a respite, and he imposed it on them.^[11]

The Prophet ﷺ taught the sound way to divorce. When a man divorced his wife during her menses, the Prophet ﷺ told him to take her back and to wait until she was pure, and then divorce only if he still chose to.^[12] The pattern is one pronouncement, a waiting period, and a chance to reconcile, with an arbitrator from each family if they fear a rift (4:35).^[13]

A report in Abū Dāwūd also says that three things are serious whether done in earnest or in jest: marriage, divorce and taking a wife back.^[14] This cuts against a man who says the words in rage and then cries foul, and a fair reader should say so. It is stated from general knowledge that some scholars, among them the Twelver Shīʿa and the Ahl-i-Ḥadīth, count three in one sitting as one, and that several Muslim countries and the Indian Supreme Court have limited or ended the instant triple pronouncement. These points were not checked on a page for this article.

Verdict: the sources show a graded process. A triple pronouncement in one breath is a later ruling, which was disputed from the start.

A person who describes the paid one-night marriage as barbaric is right about the practice. It treats a woman as an object passed between men, and it ignores the consent that the sources require. The Prophet ﷺ cursed it and gave it an animal’s name. Anyone who defends it as Islam has taken a rule meant to restrain divorce and turned it into a trade.

It is not honest to say that the practice has no home in the text at all. The rule of 2:230 has a gap through which it was made, and the gap was used. The curse reported from the Prophet ﷺ is the earliest condemnation in the sources, and the jurists went on condemning it.

The right test for any claim that “Islam does this” is whether the Quran commands it, whether the Prophet ﷺ did it or approved it, and whether the scholars of the law agree. Here the answer to all three is no. Verdict: the practice is cursed in the sources. Its existence is a fact about Muslim communities and about the use of a loophole.