Umm Kulthum bint Uqbah and the Women's Exception

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Soon after Abū Baṣīr came Umm Kulthūm bint ʿUqbah ibn Abī Muʿayṭ, daughter of the man who had thrown the camel's entrails on the Prophet ﷺ in prostration, who had embraced Islam and now fled persecution to Madinah, among the first women to arrive after the treaty. Returning a man to torture was one thing; returning a woman was another, and even the Prophet ﷺ was uncertain what to do. Allah then revealed Sūrat al-Mumtaḥanah 10: "Yā ayyuhā alladhīna āmanū idhā jā'akumu al-mu'minātu muhājirātin fa-imtaḥinūhunna" (يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا إِذَا جَاءَكُمُ الْمُؤْمِنَاتُ مُهَاجِرَاتٍ فَامْتَحِنُوهُنَّ, "O believers, when believing women come to you as emigrants, test them"): if found sincere, they are not to be returned to the disbelievers, for they are no longer lawful to one another as spouses, while the disbelieving husbands are to be repaid the dowry they had given, and the women may be married after their waiting period.

Dr. Qadhi notes that here again the Prophet ﷺ followed the letter of the treaty: the written clause specified only "no man shall come to us" (لَا يَأْتِي مِنَّا رَجُلٌ), using the word rajul. Though the spirit of such a clause plainly intends any person, and the emigrants were mostly men, it did not say so, and Allah decreed that the ruling would not extend to women. So women were permitted to emigrate and be granted refuge while men were not, another turn of Allah's plan that neither party had had in mind, sparing persecuted women the fate the treaty imposed on men. Umm Kulthūm later married among the Companions, including Zayd ibn Ḥārithah.