La yahillu laka annisao min baAAdu wala an tabaddala bihinna min azwajin (surah Ahzab: 52)

Tafseer Tafheem-ul-Quran by Syed Abu-al-A'la Maududi

(33:52) Thereafter women will not be lawful for you, and it will not be lawful for you to take other wives in place of them, even though their beauty might please you, *93unless they be those whom your right hand owns. *94 Allah is watchful over everything.

Laa yahillu lakan nisaaa`u mim ba`du wa laaa an tabaddala bihinna min azwaajinw wa law ajabaka husnuhunna illaa maa malakat yameenukk; wa kaanal laahu `alaa kulli shai`ir Raqeeba

*93) This has two meanings: (1) `No other woman except those made lawful to you in verse 50 above, is any more lawful to you"; and (2) 'when your wives have become pleased and ready to stay with you through every kind of hardship and have rejected the world in preference to the Hereafter, and are satisfied that you may treat them as you please, it is no longer lawful for you that you should divorce any of them and take another wife instead."
*94) This verse explains why one is pemitted to have conjugal relations with one's slave-girls besides the wedded wives, and there is no restriction on their number. The same thing has also been stated in Surah An-Nisa': 3, AI-Mu'minun: b, and AI-Ma'arij: 30. In all these verses the slave-girls have been mentioned as a separate class from the wedded wives, and conjugal relations with them have been permitted. Moreover, verse 3 of Surah An-Nisa' lays down the number of the wives as four, but neither has Allah fixed the number of the slave-girls, in that verse nor made any allusion to their number in the other relevant verses. Here, of course, the Holy Prophet is being addressed and told: "It is no more lawful for you to take other women in marriage, or divorce any of the present wives and take another wife in her stead; slave-girls, however, are lawful." This shows that no restriction has been imposed in respect of the slavegirls.
This, however, does not mean that the Divine Law has provided the rich an opportunity to purchase as many slave-girls as they tike for their carnal indulgence. This is in fact how the self-seeking people have exploited and abused tire Law. The Law had been made for the convenience of the people; it had not been made to be abused. One could, for instance, similarly abuse the Law concerning marriage. The Shari'ah permits a man to marry up to four wives and also gives him the right to divorce his wife and take another one. This law had been made in view of man's requirements and needs. Now, if a person, merely for the sake of sensual enjoyment, were to adopt the practice of keeping four wives for a time and then divorcing them to be replaced by another company of them, it would be abusing the provisions of the law, for which the person himself would be responsible and not the Shari`ah. Likewise the Shari'ah has allowed that the women who are captured in war and whose people do not exchange them for Muslim prisoners of war nor ransom them, may be kept as slave-girls, and gave the persons to whom they are assigned by the government the right to have conjugal relations with them so that they do not become a moral hazard for the society. Then, as it was not possible to determine the number of the prisoners of war, legally also it could nor be determined how many slave girls a person could keep at a time. The sale of the slaves and slave-girls was also allowed for the reason that if a slave or a slave-girl could not pull on well with a master, he or she could be transferred to another person so that the same person's permanent ownership did not become a cause of unending torture for both the master and the captive. The Shari`ah made aII these laws keeping in view human conditions and requirements for the convenience of men. If these have been made a means of sexual enjoyment and luxury by the rich, it is they who are to blame for this and not the Shari'ah .