Recordings › Can a Nikah with a Non-Muslim be valid? - Mufti Abu Layth Al-Maliki · 10 May 2019 › Segment 6 of 9
Did any early scholars allow marrying Zoroastrians or idol worshippers?
hadeeth ahadith ahaadeeth hadis hadees ahaadith malik ibn anas malik bin anas imam maalik imam malik ibn anas imaam prayer leader muftis hukm ahkam hukum hukam ahkaam sunna sunnat sunan prophetic practice muwatta malik muwatta imam malik muwata shirk shirq mushrikin polytheism iman imaan eemaan eeman sahabah sahaba sahabi sahabiyyah sahabiyat mecca makka mekka shiah shiite shi'i twelver ithna ashari ulama ulema ulamaa nikah nikkah nikaah nikah nama nikahnama ibadah ibada ibaadah ibadatZoroastrian and idolater spouses in early opinions, and why same-faith marriage was stressed
Play from 27:17
The video loads from YouTube only when you press play. Click a time in the transcript to seek.
Watch this part
Open on YouTube at 27:17The player starts at 27:17, the beginning of this part.
This segment27:17 to 33:03 · 5 min 46 sGeneral teaching
What this part covers
machinesummary, machine-writtenYes: some companions and early scholars allowed relations with Zoroastrian and even idol-worshipping women. Same-faith marriage was stressed because early Islam needed stable Muslim families, and it remains strongly encouraged.
In more detail
Mufti Abu Layth notes that Imam Malik in al-Muwatta transmits, unusually, through Ja'far al-Sadiq, Muhammad al-Baqir and Zayn al-Abidin, that Umar did not know what to do about the Zoroastrians and Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf reported that the Prophet said to treat them as the People of the Book, which he takes as a sign of mutual respect later obscured by politics. Based on this, he says, Hudhayfa ibn al-Yaman, Amr ibn Dinar and others allowed relations with Zoroastrian women, and Tawus, a student of Ibn Abbas, extended it to idol-worshipping women, citing the captives after the battle of Awtas; he refers to his separate segment on slavery and trajectory hermeneutics. He explains that intermarriage was uncommon because early Islam was in an insecure, make-or-break phase that needed Muslim families and society, unlike today with 1.8 billion Muslims. He says he feels that sharing a common faith, especially in family life, is still strongly encouraged.
- Some terms in this segment are uncertain
Position stated
Mufti Abu Layth says he feels that sharing a common faith and common goals is still strongly encouraged, especially in family life.
“I feel that it is still strongly encouraged that that is that you share common faith you share common goals”
Category: teaching
Kind: general teachingTranscript
machine27:17 to 33:03 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary
it to her own kids so and it was so easy for Imam Ali call those people to say it's the man's house he should say well this is my roof my rules you take the pork out throw it out you're not allowed to bring it but no he said lay sallahu I am NOT haha he cannot prevent her from you know eating laughing things here all come up so okay so it's not the food it's not the influence of impurity and stuff like this hmm okay what about another spanner in the
works what about the miju's the Rast Rian's now here it gets a little interesting because imam malik transmits in his multiple people this is the book of imam ali khan happy now he transmits about the jizya values here in hadith number in this edition right 631 had these 631 from Malik from and this is really interesting you know Imam Malik sometimes he doesn't normally transmit from imam ja'far
as-sadiq not I mean we don't know the reason but he doesn't generally have transmissions much from him although imam ja'far as-sadiq was his teacher but yet here Imam Malik is transmitting from imam ja'far as-sadiq from his father Mohammed Alberti from his father ali zayn al-abideen and it got but then he says from Almighty Blanca pop really interesting that Imam Malik brings a chain going from the kind of Shia Imams and then linking it through to homer as well through him demonstrating that maybe you know things
that these the things have just become unnecessarily so politicized that you know that they did have this kind of respect for each other and love and admiration so he transmits from Omar that the that he mentioned Medusa's Austrians and he said how what do I do about them I don't know so abdul-rahman even out said I heard the Messenger of Allah say shinobi him Sonata a lil Keita tsunami him Sonata a link it up then you treat them the way
you treat the people of the book that go not just soon all I take the same Sunnah the same road for them that you take for so based on this when it came to having that could you have intimate relationships with these people you had certain scholars all of sudden certain companions like her they furtive Dalia man rody Allah on said you could with the miju's you had people like I'm Reba Nadine are from Makkah who said you could you had a five no beer ABBA who said you could especially and I know it's a whole different discussion I've discussed it in the past as well about
things like servants and that they had in the past and slaves now but expanding on that and I've explained all of that in a separate segment and you can watch it out on I mean you can check it out on YouTube about slavery and I've explained how with trajectory hermeneutics that was to be made harm in time to come but it's interesting how especially in though but indeed in those aspects as well that they said that the stree ins were just like the people of the book now now who's who is a student of empanada bus went one step further and
said a me idol worshiper to he said what the nyet even women who worshipped idols and he based this on the Battle of the Prophet which was known as versatile authors that when they came back from thee there were several women that came back with them that many of the companions had relationships with and they said that Tahu said that they weren't Muslim and they weren't Adil get up they were mushrik at there were women that used to just worship idols now based on this people when you see all of
these kind of things you understand that well okay so why wasn't this commonly happening and what you get is that look Islam in its early time was a make-or-break deal with the Companions and with the early communities and it was important that Muslims kind of set up families set up a society for Islam to really flourish that at that time it was going through an unstable and insecure phase in tight like today is farm like let's say when
we are 1.8 billion people on the earth Islam is no longer insecure you know with the likes of me or you whatever we make no difference to Islam you know if Islam is here to stay now it's not the same as it was in the beginning when Islam was simply a society now at that time if people started diluting and branching out it would have could have caused problems so this is why strongly emphasize the bond between whistling between people of the
same of the same thing so you could have that kind of a household even today this is the ruling generally within Islam I feel that it is still strongly encouraged that that is that you share common faith you share common goals especially when it comes to family life but the question is if you didn't if somebody did conduct a Makau with a non-muslim or somebody embraced Islam and the other partner was still non Muslim is that relationship still valid is it valid I'm not saying is it a good thing or should you be doing it but is
Paragraphs overlapping 27:17 to 33:03. Full text on the recording page.
Cite this segment
Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2019-05-10-S06, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/c8fjy8mcezm/s/6/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2019, May 10). Did any early scholars allow marrying Zoroastrians or idol worshippers? [Video, segment 2019-05-10-S06, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/c8fjy8mcezm/s/6/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2019. "Did any early scholars allow marrying Zoroastrians or idol worshippers?" Video, segment 2019-05-10-S06, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded May 10, 2019. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/c8fjy8mcezm/s/6/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2019-05-10-S06, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{Did any early scholars allow marrying Zoroastrians or idol worshippers?}}, year = {2019}, month = {5}, date = {2019-05-10}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/c8fjy8mcezm/s/6/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/c8fjy8mcezm/s/6/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2019-05-10-S06, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
Something wrong here?
Tell us what is wrong and it will be checked against the recording. Nothing changes until a person has reviewed it.
Sending a note needs JavaScript, which is off or unavailable in this browser. Nothing has been sent.
No name, email address or account is asked for or stored, and the inbox does not store your IP address. For rate limiting it keeps an unreadable fingerprint of your connection for 48 hours, and our database provider's own logs record connections as every website's do. Only your note, its kind, the page and the moment in the recording are kept, for review.