In the Name of God, the Lord of Grace, the Most Merciful
Never has God put two hearts in one man’s body. Nor does He make your wives whom you declare to be as unlawful to you as your mothers’ bodies truly your mothers. Likewise, He does not make your adopted sons truly your sons. These are only words you utter with your mouths, but God says the truth and He alone shows the right path. Call them by their fathers’ names; that is more just in God’s sight. If you do not know who their fathers are, then treat them as your brethren in faith and your protégés. You shall not be blamed if you make a mistake, but for what your hearts intend. God is indeed Much-Forgiving, Merciful.(The Confederates Al-Ahzab: 33: 4-5)
These two verses begin with a categorical statement that must be applied in human life to bring consistency into all its activities. “Never has God put two hearts in one man’s body.” Since it is only one heart, it needs one system providing one complete and full concept of life. It requires one standard to give consistent values and judge events and actions. Otherwise, it will be pulled apart and will have different motives and considerations. It could easily fall into the trap of hypocrisy.
Man cannot have one source for his manners and morality, another for his laws and legislation, a third for his social and economic values, and a fourth for his art and philosophy. Such a mixture does not produce a man with a sound heart: it only produces a confused medley that lacks solid form or basis. A person with faith cannot truly hold to his faith and abandon its values and requirements in any situation in life, serious or not. He cannot say a word, take an action, formulate a concept, make a decision unless he remains within the limits established by his faith, which must always be a reality in his life. This is because God has not given him more than one heart, one law and one standard of values. A person of faith cannot say of anything he does: “I am doing this in my personal capacity and I am doing that in my Islamic capacity”, as we frequently hear politicians, businessmen, academics and others say. Since he is one person with one heart, he has one faith and one standard that govern all that he does and says in any and every situation. With this one heart he lives as an individual, a family man, a member of the community, a citizen of the state and the world; he lives in public and private, employer or employee, ruler or ruled, in situations of comfort or distress; having the same values and standards at all times: “Never has God put two hearts in one man’s body.”
In short, we have a single system outlined by the same revelations and submitting to the One God. A single heart cannot worship two deities, serve two masters and move in two directions.
Right at the outset, the Surah moves to abolish certain practices in order to make the family the basis of the community. In pre-Islamic days a man would say to his wife, “you are to me like my mother’s back”, which meant that she was forbidden for him to marry. From that moment sex between them was regarded as incestuous. Yet she remained suspended: she was neither divorced such that she could marry another man, nor married having a lawful relationship with her husband. This was one aspect of the cruelty to which women were subjected in pre-Islamic days. As Islam started to reorganize social relations, making the family the basic social unit where each new generation grows in a sound environment, it attached great importance to removing such injustices against women and to giving family relations a basis of fairness and an easy, relaxed atmosphere. One of its new laws was “Nor does He make your wives whom you declare to be as unlawful to you as your mothers’ bodies truly your mothers.” The words a man utters do not change facts. Mothers and wives are totally different, and the nature of a relationship cannot be changed by the uttering of a word. Therefore, a pronouncement like this, or zihar, did not make a wife permanently forbidden to her husband as if she were his mother.
Some reports suggest that zihar was outlawed by other verses in Surah 58, The Pleading, when Aws Ibn Al-Samit pronounced zihar against his wife Khawlah bint Malik Ibn Tha’labah. She complained to the Prophet, saying: “Messenger of God! He took my money and used me throughout my years of strength, and I have given him children. Now when I have grown old and can no longer bear children, he makes me like his mother!” The Prophet said to her: “I am afraid you are no longer lawful to him.” (Related by Ibn Majah, Al-Hakim and Al-Bayhaqi) She repeated her complaint several times. God then revealed the following verses: “God has heard the words of the woman who pleads with you concerning her husband, and complained to God. God has heard what you both had to say. God is All-Hearing, All-Seeing. Even if any of you say to their wives, ‘You are to me like my mother’s bodies,’ they are not their mothers; their only mothers are those who gave them birth. What they say is iniquitous and false. Yet God pardons and forgives. Those who separate themselves from their wives by saying, ‘You are as unlawful to me as my mother,’ and then go back on what they have said, must atone by freeing a slave before the couple may resume their full marital relation. This you are enjoined to do, and God is fully aware of all that you do. However, he who does not have the means shall fast instead for two consecutive months before the couple may resume their full marital relation; and he who is unable to do it shall feed sixty needy people; this, so that you may prove your faith in God and His Messenger. Such are the bounds set by God. Grievous suffering awaits those who will not believe.” (58: 1-4)
Thus, zihar is treated as a temporary prohibition of marital relations; it is neither permanent nor a divorce. It must be atoned for by the freeing of a slave, or fasting for two consecutive months, or feeding 60 needy people. When such atonement is made full marital relations can be resumed, retaining the practical facts as they are. The statement in the present Surah is very clear: “Nor does He make your wives whom you declare to be as unlawful to you as your mothers’ bodies truly your mothers.” The family is thus safeguarded against this unfair practice, something that represented an aspect of the maltreatment of women in pre-Islamic Arabian society.