Surah Al-Ahzab, Ayah 5

Abolition of Adoption

Before Allah discusses ideas and theoretical matters, He gives tangible examples: one man cannot have two hearts in his body, and a man's wife does not become his mother if he says the words of Zihar to her: "You are to me like the back of my mother." By the same token, an adopted child does not become the son of the man who adopts him and calls him his son. Allah says:

مَّا جَعَلَ اللَّهُ لِرَجُلٍ مِّن قَلْبَيْنِ فِى جَوْفِهِ وَمَا جَعَلَ أَزْوَجَكُمُ اللاَّئِى تُظَـهِرُونَ مِنْهُنَّ أُمَّهَـتِكُمْ

(Allah has not made for any man two hearts inside his body. Neither has He made your wives whom you declare to be like your mothers' backs, your real mothers...) This is like the Ayah:

Commentary

Previous verses carried instructions to the Holy Prophet ﷺ asking him not to act upon their advice and not to be cajoled into what they wanted to achieve. In the cited verses, there is a refutation of three customs prevailing among disbelievers as well as of their false notions.

(1) During jahiliyyah, Arabs used to say about a person who was smarter than others that he had two hearts in his chest cage.

(2) Then they had a custom about their wives following which a person would declare his wife to be like the back of his mother, or some other part of the body, and go on to say, 'you are, for me, like the back of my mother.' This, in their usage, was called "Zihar." It is a derivation from: Zahr, which means 'back'. They thought that if a person who had done "Zihr" with his wife, she becomes haram (unlawful) to him forever.

A man does not have two hearts in his chest. This shows that contradictory thinking does not fit in with the scheme of creation. When a man has been given one heart, his thinking should also be one. It cannot be that in one and the same heart, sincerity coexists with hypocrisy, devotion to God with a time-serving mentality, justice with oppression and vanity with modesty. Of the two alternatives, man can have only the God-fearing one, and that is as it should be. This is a matter of principle, and under it are covered the pre-Islamic conventions of divorce (zihar) and adoption. It was the custom among pre-Islamic Arabs that if a man said to his wife, ‘You are like my mother’s back for me’, then his wife was treated as forbidden for him forever, just as his mother was forbidden for him. Similarly, in the matter of an adopted son, they held the belief that he became just like a real son. He was given the same status as a real son in every respect. The Quran abolished this custom completely. It has been made clear in the Quran that it is against the system underlying creation for the status of a real mother to be the same as that of an adoptive mother or the status of an adopted son to be the same as that of a real son. If a man commits an error unknowingly, he is pardonable before God. But, if a man is fully aware of the reality of an affair, and in spite of that he does not desist from wrongdoing, he ceases to be pardonable.