Īlāʾ, Ẓihār & Liʿān — The Quranic Separations

Three Separations Named in the Qurʾān

Among the matters of marriage, three are so weighty that Allah legislated them by direct revelation rather than leaving them to custom: Īlāʾ (the oath of abstention), Ẓihār (the false likening of one's wife to a forbidden relative), and Liʿān (the mutual oaths sworn when a husband accuses his wife of adultery without witnesses). Each begins with the tongue — an oath, a statement, or an accusation — and each carries a defined consequence in the Book of Allah.

What unites them is that the sacred text does not merely disapprove; it prescribes a precise way out. Īlāʾ is capped by a time limit. Ẓihār is met with a graded expiation. Liʿān is resolved by solemn oaths before a judge. Below, each is set out with its ruling, its Qurʾānic proof, and — where the scholars of the Sunnah honestly differed — the principal positions, stated with the respect due to the people of knowledge.

Īlāʾ — The Oath of Abstention

Īlāʾ is that a husband swears by Allah to withhold intimacy from his wife. In the pre-Islamic period a man might swear such an oath indefinitely, leaving the woman "neither married nor divorced." The Qurʾān closed this door by fixing a term: four months. Within it he may return to her (fayʾah), and Allah is Forgiving; if the term passes upon his resolve, the marriage moves to divorce.

Ikhtilāf on what happens when the four months pass. The scholars agree on the limit but differed on its effect. Ibn Masʿūd and the Kūfans (the position associated with Abū Ḥanīfah) held that the mere passing of four months without return effects a divorce by itself. The majority — Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī and Aḥmad — held that the term does not divorce automatically; rather the husband is stopped and required to choose: either return to her (fayʾah) or pronounce the divorce, taking the ordering of the two verses ("if they return… and if they resolve upon divorce") as a required choice put to him. Both parties are reasoning from the same āyāt, and the difference is one of genuine, respected interpretation.

Ẓihār — The False Likening and Its Expiation

Ẓihār is a man's saying to his wife, "You are to me like the back of my mother" (or another forbidden relative). In the Jāhiliyyah this counted as a divorce. Islam abolished that: the Qurʾān names it a false and blameworthy word — for a wife is not a mother — yet does not leave the marriage destroyed. Instead it prescribes an expiation the man must pay before the couple may resume relations. The occasion of revelation is the case of Khawlah bint Thaʿlabah, who was wronged by such a pronouncement from her husband Aws ibn al-Ṣāmit and pleaded her cause to the Prophet ﷺ and to Allah; the opening of Sūrat al-Mujādilah records that Allah heard her.

The Qurʾān then lays down the expiation (kaffārah) in a fixed order — each stage reached only when the one before it is beyond the person's ability — and stresses that it is discharged before the spouses touch one another:

Ikhtilāf on the meaning of "then wish to go back" (thumma yaʿūdūna). Scholars differed over what act makes the kaffārah binding. Al-Shāfiʿī held that the "return" is the man's retaining the marriage rather than divorcing after the ẓihār, so the expiation is due once he keeps her. Others — including the position of Mālik and Aḥmad — tied it to his intent to resume intimacy. The Ẓāhirī reading took the plain word literally. All agree the kaffārah is real, ordered, and prior to renewed relations; they differ on precisely which moment triggers the obligation.

Liʿān — The Mutual Invoking of the Oaths

When a husband accuses his wife of adultery and has no four witnesses — as the law of qadhf normally demands — he is not simply subjected to the eighty-lash punishment for a false accuser, nor is his charge simply accepted. The Qurʾān opens a distinct path for spouses: liʿān, a set of sworn oaths before the judge. The husband swears four times by Allah that he is truthful, and a fifth invoking Allah's curse upon himself if he lies. The wife may repel the punishment from herself by swearing four times that he lies, and a fifth invoking Allah's wrath upon herself if he is truthful.

The Sunnah preserves the procedure in practice. Sahl ibn Saʿd al-Sāʿidī رضي الله عنه narrated the case of ʿUwaymir al-ʿAjlānī, who came to the Prophet ﷺ over his wife; the two performed the mutual oaths in the mosque, and the Prophet ﷺ separated them. ʿUwaymir then pronounced divorce upon her before being told, and it became a Sunnah that the couple of liʿān are parted.

Ikhtilāf on the effect of liʿān. The majority — Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī and Aḥmad — held that once the mutual oaths are complete the spouses are separated permanently and may never remarry, taking the Prophet's ﷺ words and practice as decisive. Abū Ḥanīfah and his companions held that the separation is effected by the judge and, in their framing, could in principle be undone if the husband retracts and accepts the ḥadd of qadhf. The dominant, better-evidenced view among the people of hadith is permanent separation. All agree, however, that the oaths ward off the ordinary punishments from the truthful party and leave the ultimate reckoning to Allah.

What the Three Have in Common

Read together, Īlāʾ, Ẓihār and Liʿān show a single sacred logic. Each protects the wife from being suspended in limbo by a man's tongue: the abstainer is given four months and no more; the one who utters ẓihār cannot simply cast his wife aside — he owes an ordered expiation and the marriage stands unless he divorces; and the accuser cannot destroy his wife's honour on a bare word — the matter is lifted to sworn oaths before Allah. In every case the door is oaths and words, and in every case Allah legislates a defined, dignified resolution.

This is also why these three are studied together in the books of fiqh, immediately after the chapters on divorce (ṭalāq): they are the borderline cases where a marriage neither cleanly continues nor cleanly ends until a precise procedure runs its course. The correct posture for the believer is to take the ruling from its evidence, to seek a qualified scholar for any real case, and to render every oath in the Name of Allah with the gravity that these āyāt demand.

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