I live in France and I want to marry a good Muslim girl but the problem is that I was in a relationship with her mother for a long time. So am I allowed to marry the girl?

This is one of the debatable issues among scholars. The Hanafi jurists for example believe that committing adultery with the mother automatically prohibits marrying the daughter and vice versa. As for both the Shafi’i and Maliki scholars, they believe that prohibited acts do not prohibit lawful ones. This means that it is permissible for the man who committed adultery with a woman then repented and cut off the relationship to marry the woman’s daughter or mother.

We believe that the whole matter is based on deterring the act of committing adultery and this issue differs according to differences in societies and the nature of the relationship among people. Therefore if marrying the daughter will lead to even the slightest possibility of resuming adultery between the man and the mother then the Hanafi fatwa of prohibiting this marriage prevails to deter the possibility of committing adultery. But if the prohibited relationship between the man and the mother ceased indefinitely and that both parties are adamant on refraining from resuming such prohibited relationship then there is no legal impediment to adopt the opinions of the Malikis and the Shafi’is which permit marrying the daughter of a mother with whom adultery was committed.