Thirteen questions on nikah and mahr: forcing a signature to an inflated mahr

Question

(1) One morning before the nikah, the members of the mosque’s committee summoned Bakr to a room in a neutral house and told him to sign a document. When the president of the committee read out this document, its decision was written in it: on the basis of certain circumstantial indications (qara’in) the committee decides that Bakr is to marry Hinda with a mahr of one thousand rupees in current coin and keep her with him during the very days of pregnancy.

Answer

(1) Such compulsion by the committee is oppression (zulm); it has absolutely no right to do this (so in al-Durr al-Mukhtar). Further, fixing the mahr on its own behalf, writing an inflated sum into the document and taking a signature to it — this too is oppression.

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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