Captives in a religious war and married women (Q. 4:24)

Scholars differ over the effect of captivity on a marriage in the verse about married women, which makes an exception for captives owned by the believers, and over the conditions for making captives lawful. Muhammad Rashid Rida relates the majority view that the exception covers married women taken captive in a religious war, and holds with Muhammad Abduh that captivity is not permitted in a war waged for worldly gain. ^{1 2}

Rida relates that the majority took the exception to refer to married women, meaning those taken captive in a religious war in which Muslims defend their religion, and held that captive women do not return to their unbelieving husbands in the land of war. Their marriage is therefore dissolved, and enjoyment becomes lawful after a waiting period. He notes that the waiting period for a pregnant woman ends with the birth of her child, and for a woman who is not pregnant, with a menstrual period followed by purity. He also relates a report on the occasion of the revelation, from Abu Sa'id al-Khudri, which concerns the captives of Awtas. ¹

Rida relates that the Hanafis and some Hanbalis held that a woman taken captive together with her husband may not be lawful to another man, and so they treated a difference of territory as relevant to lawfulness. Others said that a difference of territory has no effect, and that a woman taken without her husband becomes lawful after the waiting period, since her husband may have been killed or may have fled. ¹

Rida notes that captives' husbands were usually killed or fled, and that the Muslims were responsible for maintaining these women, so it was in the interest of the women and of society that each have a guardian. He answers the question of why Islam neither imposed nor required captivity nor forbade it: there is benefit in it in some circumstances, such as when a war would otherwise wipe out the men of a tribe. When Muslims see the interest in returning captives to their people, it is permitted or even obligatory. All of this applies to religious war; captivity is not permitted in a war for worldly gain. ²

Rida holds that the wording on ownership indicates that ownership arises through captivity, not that they report an earlier ownership. He considers the case of a married slave-woman in the land of Islam a different question that the exception does not cover. He relates a view attributed to some Companions, including Ibn Mas'ud, that the new owner nullifies a slave-woman's marriage, and notes that this is said to be the view of the majority of the Imamis. Rida regards this view as preferable to the view of the majority of Sunni scholars, were it not for Abduh's view that such a marriage is not to be counted. All of this is the opinion of Rida and Abduh. ^{2 3}

Recent studies of the history of captivity in early Islam have not yet been added, nor have the works of jurisprudence that attribute each view to its proponents, nor the reports Rida cites on the waiting period, with their chains of transmission.