Continuation of the explanation of the verse: “And the daughters of your wives who are in your care from your wives…”

What remains are the prohibitions by breastfeeding, which is the second category. He said: I think we stopped here? Meaning, it seems we postponed the conditions to the benefits section. All of these are prohibited by affinity. He said: “Hala’il” is the plural of “halilah,” and it includes the wife and the slave woman. However, the wife becomes prohibited to the husband’s father immediately upon the contract, whereas the slave woman does not become prohibited to the master’s father except through intercourse. If he has intercourse with her, that is because… before he has intercourse with her, it is possible that the commodity is sold and bought. So if he has intercourse with her, he has chosen her for himself. Thus, “hala’il” is the plural of “halilah,” which is the wife he has made lawful through the contract or the slave woman he has made lawful through intercourse. And His saying: Allah the Exalted did not mention a condition in it, so it includes every wife, whether the son has had intercourse with her or not. Accordingly, the son’s wife is forbidden to his father even if he divorced her before intercourse, and even if he divorced her before seclusion, due to the generality of the verse. And His saying, the Exalted: “Aslāb” is the plural of “salb,” which is the back. The intended meaning is the sons born from his seed, because this is the “salb.” This is a condition. What does it exclude? The majority of scholars hold that it excludes adopted sons, as it was the custom of people in the pre-Islamic age of ignorance (jahiliyyah) for a man to adopt a son and say, “You are my son,” and treat him like his son in inheritance and other matters. So the son is qualified here by being from the “salb” to exclude the adopted son. This is the view of the majority. However, there is no harm in saying that it includes the adopted son and the son by breastfeeding, because the son by breastfeeding is not from his “salb,” and the son by breastfeeding is called a son by the Shari'ah. But the adopted son has been invalidated by the Shari'ah. Allah the Exalted said: So if it has been invalidated by the Shari'ah, there is no need for a condition to exclude it. Why? Because it is not included in the meaning of sonship when used in a general sense, not legally, nor physically, because he is not from his seed. Accordingly, this condition is more apparent for excluding the son by breastfeeding than for excluding the adopted son, because the adopted son is not recognized by the Shari'ah, so there is no need for a condition to exclude him from the meaning of sonship. To this view went Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him), even though it is thought that he differed from people on this, but his statement, upon reflection, is the correct one. That affinity does not apply to the breastfed person, and breastfeeding has no connection to it, because the hadith is: And the husband’s father and the husband’s son are only forbidden by what? By affinity. So how do we include in the hadith what is not included in it? And likewise in the noble verse. Then he said: Here is a prohibition that is not upon us, but it is an action, which is combining. Meaning, it is forbidden for us to combine between two sisters. Pay attention! For this reason, it is not correct to express it by saying, “The wife’s sister is forbidden” or “The wife’s aunt is forbidden,” because that is not found in the Qur'an or the Sunnah. In the Qur'an: And in the Sunnah: So the ruling is contingent on an action, which is combining, and not on a specific person, such as the sister or the aunt. For this reason, we say that the expression of some scholars, “The wife’s sister, her aunt, and her maternal aunt are forbidden”, is lenient. The correct statement is: It is forbidden to combine between two sisters, between the aunt and the woman, and between the maternal aunt and the woman. This is the correct statement. And his saying: includes full sisters, sisters from the father, and sisters from the mother, because the verse is general. And his saying: We say in it what we said regarding His saying, the Exalted: Meaning, but what has already passed is forgiven. And Allah the Exalted mentioned it to… the status, and so that a person is not preoccupied with his past action that occurred in the manner that is forbidden. Based on this, what is the status of the child resulting from the marriage that has already passed? Does it belong to the one who had intercourse or not? Meaning, if a person married his father’s wife in the pre-Islamic age of ignorance and she bore a child from him, and then he embraced Islam, they are separated because the cause of prohibition remains. But the child resulting from the first marriage is attributed to him legally. And this, Allah knows best, is the wisdom behind His saying: In order to remove what is in the heart of the person completely, because he might say, if it is forbidden to me, what is my position regarding the child who was created from me at that time? So Allah reassured the servants by His saying: And this is what Allah has opened up now, that this is the wisdom in the exception of what preceded or the correction of what preceded. Otherwise, someone might say: How does what preceded apply to him? How does the prohibition return to him? By what is called retroactive effect? We say: The wisdom of that is the greatness of the status, and secondly: if a child is born in that marriage, the child is a legal child with no anxiety or… because it is forgiven, and its effects are forgiven. This has passed through us many times, and it contains emphasis. Emphasis of two of the names of Allah with two emphatic markers: “Inna” and “kana.” Because “kana,” as we mentioned before, is stripped of time and indicates the realization of the description. And his saying: “Al-Ghafur” is the form of exaggeration from “ghafalah,” which is covering sins and not holding them against. And “Al-Rahim” is also the form of exaggeration from “rahmah” (mercy). And mercy is an essential attribute of Allah the Exalted, but it has effects, such as: the descent of rain, the abundance of provision, the increase of knowledge, the correct direction of people, and the like. These things are from the effects of Allah’s mercy, and they are not the mercy itself, but they are called mercy because they are effects of Allah’s mercy, as Allah said in Paradise: .