عَلِمْتُمُوهُنَّ

4:5, 25.

2:222.

Commentary:

Here is a testimony to the irresistible appeal of the Message of Islam. At a time when Muslims were being bitterly persecuted and it was not safe to leave Mecca and join the Muslim Community at Medina, a continuous stream of believers was pouring into Medina, leaving behind in Mecca their dear and near ones. These Refugees contained a fair number of women among them. The verse under comment refers to such refugee Muslim women. The verse also constitutes an eloquent commentary on the Holy Prophet’s anxiety not to accept into the Muslim Community any woman who had fled from Mecca unless there was proof available, after subjecting her to searching examination, that she was sincere, and honest in her faith and that she was accepting Islam out of no ulterior or otherwise objectionable motives. The verse further states that the marriage-tie between a refugee believing woman and her dis-believing husband becomes dissolved when she joins the Muslim Community, and a believer is allowed to marry such a woman, provided he fulfils two conditions: (a) He should have paid back to the disbelieving husband of such woman what the latter had spent on her, and (b) he should also have fixed or paid her dowry. Similarly, the marriage-tie between a Muslim and his wife who gives up Islam could not continue and the same procedure would be adopted if such an apostate woman marries a disbeliever as in the case of marriage between a Muslim and a refugee believing woman. The reciprocal arrangement prescribed in this verse is not the private affair of the individuals concerned but is to be carried out by the State, as is the practice in time of war, to which the verses particularly apply; there could not and should not continue any social relations between individual believers and individual disbelievers.