Muhammad — "except with their wives and slave girls, for these are lawful to them."
except with their wives and slave girls, for these are lawful to them.
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Details
Quran 23:5-6, regarding lawful sexual relations.
Date: c. 610-622 CE (Meccan Sura)
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Understanding this quote
What it means
This statement draws a line around sexual conduct, saying intimacy is permitted only within specific sanctioned relationships rather than outside them. In modern terms, it sets a boundary: sex belongs inside recognized bonds, and anything beyond those bonds is off-limits. The passage frames restraint as the default and names the narrow categories where physical relations are allowed, treating everything else as prohibited behavior for the faithful.
Relevance to Muhammad
Muhammad delivered moral and legal rulings that shaped both worship and private life for his followers. As a religious and civic leader in seventh-century Arabia, he codified marriage rules, regulated existing social institutions rather than abolishing them overnight, and anchored conduct to revealed scripture. His own multiple marriages and household arrangements made him a practical model, and statements like this became source material for later Islamic jurisprudence on family, chastity, and permissible intimacy.
The era
Seventh-century Arabia was tribal, patriarchal, and built on customs including polygamy, concubinage, and captive-taking through raids and warfare. Slavery was embedded across the Near East, and sexual norms varied widely without uniform regulation. Muhammad's movement introduced structured rules onto this landscape, restricting promiscuity, defining marriage contracts, and placing limits on how existing practices operated. Against a backdrop of loose customs, explicit boundaries around lawful partners marked a significant tightening of sexual conduct for the emerging community.
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