Forbidden to you are your mothers and daughters, your sisters, your aunts paternal and maternal, your brother's daughters, your sister's daughters, your mothers who have given suck to you, your suckling sisters, your wives' mothers, your stepdaughters who are in your care being born of your wives you have been in to -- but if you have not yet been in to them it is no fault in you - and the spouses of your sons who are of your loins, and that you should take to you two sisters together, unless it be a thing of the past; God is All-forgiving, All-compassionate; 23 ۞ And also forbidden are the wedded among women, save those whom your right hands own; Allah's rescript for you. And allowed unto you is whatsoever is beyond that, so that ye may seek them with your substances as properly wedded men, not as fornicators. Then whomsoever of them ye have enjoyed, give them their dowers stipulated. And there will be no blame on you in regard to aught on which ye mutually agree after the stipulation; verily Allah is Knowing, Wise. 24 And as for those of you who, owing to circumstances, are not in a position to marry free believing women, [let them marry] believing maidens from among those whom you rightfully possess. And God knows all about your faith; each one of you is an issue of the other. Marry them, then, with their people's leave, and give them their dowers in an equitable manner - they being women who give themselves in honest wedlock, not in fornication, nor as secret love-companions. And when they are married, and thereafter become guilty of immoral conduct, they shall be liable to half the penalty to which free married women are liable. This [permission to marry slave-girls applies] to those of you who fear lest they stumble into evil. But it is for your own good to persevere in patience [and to abstain from such marriages]: and God is much-forgiving, a dispenser of grace. 25