Answer: I think your
questions can be answered properly if the verse is translated like this:
[Forbidden to you] are
those ladies born of your wives with whom you have had sexual intercourse.
And if you haven’t had sexual intercourse with them, then there is no
prohibition. (4:23)
It is apparent that the
verse alludes to the daughters of a lady who enters into a new matrimonial
contract. It says that if her new marriage has been consummated, her
daughters would become unlawful for her husband. In other words, her husband
cannot marry any of her daughters from her previous marriage(s) after
divorcing her, if he has established a conjugal contact with her.
The implication evidently
is that these daughters of the lady have become like daughters to her
husband because he has gone to the field whereof his wife’s daughters have
been born. A marriage though is established by signing a matrimonial
contract, it is the consummation of marriage that is actually the
culmination, which makes the couple wife and husband in the truest sense.
This now means that the wife’s relationships become those of the husbands
and vice versa. As an obvious corollary, this situation does not arise if
the husband divorces his wife before establishing conjugal contact with her.
It is in this case, that the husband has been allowed to marry the daughter
of his ex-wife, born of her previous marriage.
I am afraid I have not been
able to trace any Shān-i-Nuzūl mentioned regarding this verse. And I opine
that there is, in fact, no need to find it out. It is actually the context
of the Holy Qur’ān, which portrays the circumstances that must have existed
when any verse was revealed. |