On Thursday, the Egyptian Dar al-Ifta issued a fatwa in response to remarks made by an Egyptian "legal analyst" during a television interview, where he claimed to have married 33 times in two years "to return divorced women to their husbands after they have been divorced three times as a charitable act." The Dar al-Ifta stated that "the marriage of a divorced woman – that is, one who has been divorced three times – in order to make her lawful to her first husband, known as 'marriage for the sake of legalizing,' is prohibited by consensus among the jurists."
In the interview, Mohamed Al-Mallah mentioned that he started this experience when "a colleague suggested that I marry her friend who had been divorced three times so that she could return to her husband as a humanitarian act seeking God's pleasure." He added, "I indeed married her, and it was a complete marriage; later we separated and she returned to her husband, and that was the end (...) after a while, the situation repeated, and I married again based on my friends' suggestions."
He continued, "I do this for God's sake as a voluntary act without any compensation, and I do not receive money for the purpose of saving homes from destruction and the separation of spouses, and I have a Facebook page promoting this matter." However, Mokhtar Ateya, a professor at Al-Azhar University, responded by saying, "This cannot be for God's sake; you are contradicting His Sharia."
In response to this, Al-Mallah stated, "If Dar al-Ifta tells me that this action is wrong, I will stop."
