Delving into the Concept of "Consorting in an Honorable Manner" in Verse 19 of Sūrat al-Nisā’ and its Role in the Legal Duties of Couples

The main source of the well-known rule "consorting in an honorable manner" is the Qur’anic command, "Wa ‘āshirūhunna bi al-ma‘rūf (Consort with them in an honorable manner)". With the lexical analysis of the term ma’rūf we find that the meaning of the mentioned command is consorting in a conventional way, not good socializing in the sense of socializing with purity and sincerity. What confirms this view is the contrast established in the Qur'an between honorable manner and harmful (ḍirārī) manner. The authors of jurisprudence rulings have given two main definitions for ḍirār. Some have translated it with the same meaning as harm, and others have translated it as harm and restrain (ḍīq) and constriction (ḥaraj). The result of this inference is that in married life, the creation of an executive guarantee and the legal responsibility of abandoning a “consorting in an honorable manner” is conditional on an unconventional consorting or ḍirārī consorting. As a result, contrary to the definition of honorable consorting provided by jurists and considering it to mean kindness and intimacy in the family, it does not have a guarantee in its application; unless abandoning the good company leads to marital ill-conduct or harmful behavior. This research, with the aim of providing a new definition of the ma‘rūf rule, after collecting the sources in a library manner, has analyzed the data conceptually with a descriptive method.