SURAH AN-NISA (WOMEN): 19

TTRANSLATION:

[4:19]
O you who believe, it is not lawful for you that you should forcibly take women as inheritance. Do not hold on to them so that you may take away some of what you have given them, unless they commit a clearly shameful act {16}. Live with them in the recognized manner. If you dislike them, then it is quite likely that you dislike something and Allah has placed a lot of good in it. 

INTERPRETATION:

{16} In the days of Jahiliyah (ignorance) a cruel custom existed that after the death of a woman’s husband his inheritors also treated his widow as a part of inheritance in the sense that the poor widow could neither re-marry without their permission, nor could make other important decisions of her life independently. This verse put an end to that cruel practice.

Similarly, there was another cruel practice that if a husband wanted to divorce his wife but wanted to get the Meher (money promised to wife by husband at the time of Nikah) back, then he started making her life difficult in various ways, for example, he kept her locked in the house to the extent that she couldn’t go out even for her necessary needs. The idea behind this cruel practice was to tease the wife to the extent that under duress she offered to repay the Meher in return for her freedom. In the second part of this verse this practice has been declared Hara’am (unlawful).