The choice given to the Mothers of the Believers

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

It was in that bare room that ʿUmar learned the truth: the Prophet ﷺ had not divorced anyone. He had sworn an oath to withdraw from his wives for one month, an īlāʾ (إِيلَاء). On the twenty-ninth day he returned to them, and ʿĀʾishah, who narrates this too, reminded him, "you swore a month, and today is only the twenty-ninth." He answered, "the month can be twenty-nine days." And from this we learn a point of fiqh: an oath of "one month" is fulfilled by either twenty-nine or thirty days.

❧"Do not be hasty: go and consult your parents"

He began with ʿĀʾishah. "I am going to put a matter to you," he said, "and I do not want you to be hasty about it, go and consult your mother and father before you answer me." Then he recited to her from Sūrat al-Aḥzāb, verses 28 and 29: "O wives of the Prophet, you are not like any other wives." If you desire the life of this world and its adornment, then come, إِن كُنتُنَّ تُرِدْنَ الْحَيَاةَ الدُّنْيَا وَزِينَتَهَا فَتَعَالَيْنَ أُمَتِّعْكُنَّ وَأُسَرِّحْكُنَّ سَرَاحًا جَمِيلًا, "I will provide for you and release you with a gracious release." But if you desire Allāh and His Messenger and the abode of the Hereafter, وَإِن كُنتُنَّ تُرِدْنَ اللَّهَ وَرَسُولَهُ وَالدَّارَ الْآخِرَةَ فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ أَعَدَّ لِلْمُحْسِنَاتِ مِنكُنَّ أَجْرًا عَظِيمًا, "then Allāh has prepared for the doers of good among you a great reward." Notice the point: what they had wanted was no sin at all, not ḥarām, not even makrūh, simply permitted. The choice was only this: take the dunyā, freely given, and part ways gracefully; or stay in this life of simplicity for the sake of the ākhirah.

❧"What is there to consult about?"

ʿĀʾishah did not pause. "What is there to consult about, O Messenger of Allāh? I choose Allāh and His Messenger and the Last Abode, ad-dāra al-ākhirata (الدَّارَ الْآخِرَةَ)." When a matter is that clear, the shaykh notes, one prays no istikhārah and asks no one, the answer is plain. He had told her to consult her parents precisely because he knew Abū Bakr and his wife would never counsel her to leave, and because he did not want this young wife to feel any pressure; she felt, perhaps, that he feared she might want to go, and she wanted him to know she did not. Then she added something: "and do not tell your other wives that I have chosen you", she wanted him to herself, and hoped the others would choose otherwise. But he replied, "Allāh sent me as a muballigh (مُبَلِّغ), a conveyer, and did not send me as a muʿannit (مُعَنِّت), one who makes things hard." It was not her place to make their lives difficult; if any of them left she would lose Allāh and His Messenger, and be the true loser in the end. His deep love for ʿĀʾishah, and no one doubts it was deeper than for the rest, never once made him unjust to the other Mothers of the Believers. Every single one of them chose to stay; not one so much as considered leaving, exactly as we would expect of the Ummahāt al-Muʾminīn.

❧"Allāh is your protector, and so am I"

In another wording, ʿUmar had said to him during the crisis: "O Messenger of Allāh, if you divorce them, know that Allāh is with you, and His angels, and Jibrīl, and Mīkāʾīl, and I am with you, and Abū Bakr, and all the believers." ʿUmar used to hope Allāh would confirm what he said, and three times it happened; this was one. Allāh revealed in Sūrat al-Taḥrīm, verse 4: وَإِن تَظَاهَرَا عَلَيْهِ فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ هُوَ مَوْلَاهُ وَجِبْرِيلُ وَصَالِحُ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ وَالْمَلَائِكَةُ بَعْدَ ذَٰلِكَ ظَهِيرٌ, "if you two turn against him, then Allāh is his protector, and Jibrīl, and the righteous of the believers, and the angels moreover are his support." As a father-in-law, ʿUmar was declaring plainly that he stood with the Prophet ﷺ, not with his own daughter, whatever the Prophet ﷺ decided, they were all on his side.

❧Ibn ʿAbbās's memory, and what *īlāʾ* is

Ibn ʿAbbās, a boy of ten or eleven then and outside the inner circle, remembered the same day in just a few lines, preserved in al-Bukhārī: the city woke to the rumour that all the wives were divorced and weeping, their families gathered around them; the masjid filled; ʿUmar sought permission three times; and when he asked, "have you divorced them?" the Prophet ﷺ said, "No, but I have made īlāʾ from them for a month," staying away twenty-nine days before going in to them. And īlāʾ is exactly this: an oath sworn to Allāh to keep away from one's wife for a set period, permitted so long as the term stays under the maximum the jurists put at four months. It is a tool for when a dispute overheats and both sides need time to cool and reflect. The Prophet ﷺ made his for a single month, and a month, as he taught, can be twenty-nine days.