Ali Quli Qarai, The Qur’ān with a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation (2005)
and complains to Allah.
Allah hears the conversation between the two of you.
Indeed Allah is all-hearing, all-seeing.
2 As for those of you who repudiate their wives by ẓihār,1
they are not their mothers;
their mothers are only those who bore them,
and indeed they utter an outrageous utterance
and a lie.
Indeed Allah is all-excusing, all-forgiving.
3 Those who repudiate their wives by ẓihār
and then retract what they have said,
shall set free a slave before they may touch each other.
This you are advised [to carry out],
and Allah is well aware of what you do.
4 He who cannot afford [to free a slave]
shall fast for two successive months
before they may touch each other.
If he cannot [do so],
he shall feed sixty needy persons.
This, that you may have faith in Allah and His Apostle.
These are Allah’s bounds,
and there is a painful punishment for the faithless.
5 Indeed those who oppose Allah and His Apostle
will be subdued
just as were subdued those before them.
We have certainly sent down manifest signs,
and there is a humiliating punishment for the faithless.
1 A kind of repudiation of the marital relationship among pre-Islamic Arabs which took place on a husband’s saying to his wife ‘Be as my mother’s back’ (ẓahr; hence the derivative ẓihār).
