What is the ruling on a man marrying his daughter to another man’s son in exchange for the other man marrying his daughter to the first man’s son, provided that a mahr is paid between them?

The questioner : The questions received from our brothers: First, what is the ruling of the Shari'ah regarding badilah, which is when a man marries his daughter to the son of another man, and the other man marries his daughter to the son of the first man, and each receives a mahr? If one of the sons leaves his wife, the other man has no connection to her and is not harmed by it. It is known that the two wives have given birth to several children, and after twenty-five years have passed, one of the scholars issues a fatwa stating that it is obligatory to separate each husband from his wife. Is this correct or incorrect?

The Shaykh : If it is as the scholars say, that a fatwa is based on the text of the question, meaning the questioner has accurately described the reality, then the answer is that this marriage is valid. This is because some of the Shaykhs, when they ruled on the obligation to annul this marriage, assumed that this marriage was shighar. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) prohibited shighar in more than one hadith, and said: However, the scholars differed regarding the reality of shighar: what is it? In its origin, it is when a man who has a daughter and another man who has a daughter exchange them, so each takes the other’s daughter. This is the origin of shighar. Then the disagreement arises, and it is not limited to a specific case involving a daughter; one man has a sister and another has a sister, and each takes the other’s sister. This is also from shighar. But the completion of shighar is that each makes the mahr that is obligatory upon him be the sister or daughter he presents to the other, as if it is an exchange of goods, a barter. Naturally, this is not permissible in Islam because it deprives the daughter of her right, which is the mahr. From here the disagreement begins. The completion of shighar is that one of the husbands gets angry for some reason with his wife and divorces her, so she goes to her brother or her father. Then the other man, in turn, divorces the one he has from the sister or daughter, and thus shighar becomes a cause for increasing separation and the occurrence of divorce between the married couples. This is the shighar known in the pre-Islamic age of ignorance (jahiliyyah), which the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) prohibited. However, if there is nothing of this shighar except a mere exchange, while fulfilling all the conditions of marriage: I have my sister and I gave this sister to a man named Zayd, and in return he gave me his sister, but each gave what is obligatory upon him of mahr. This is from one aspect. From another aspect, we do not link the fate of the wife each of us has with the other; one is... her matter is with her husband... the other is with her husband. If it is a mere exchange without any consideration for the completion of the pre-Islamic shighar, meaning like a man who took a relative or a female relative and gave his daughter or sister to a relative of his, then there is absolutely no harm in it, as long as the mahr is present, as long as the condition of divorce in exchange is not present. If the incident is as the man mentioned, according to what I understood, then this marriage is not shighar, as long as each one paid the mahr and each one adheres to the Shari'ah etiquettes between him and his wife. But what we fear is that there may be something in the details of the incident that the questioner did not cover, or perhaps the questioner covered it but the Shaykh who issued the fatwa did not cover it, so he issued a fatwa on the defectiveness and invalidity of this marriage, unlike others.