This is the subject where the wrongs are most symmetrical and the discourse least balanced. You hear a great deal about the duties of the wife, and far less about what the husband owes in return.
Sheikh Salih al-Fawzan levels the two pans in one sentence: the husband has a right over his wife, and the wife has a right over her husband, and each of the two must fulfil that right toward the other.
Then he states the rule that settles most conflicts: the husband must not demand his rights while neglecting his wife's, and the wife must not demand hers while neglecting her husband's.
A claim is only legitimate if you are in order yourself.
The verse that contains it all
Sheikh Abd as-Salam ash-Shuwayir points to a verse of Surah an-Nisa whose meaning is: live with them in kindness.
He says of it: were the Muslim to make it the guide of his life, he would meet no problem without finding its solution in it, nor any dispute between spouses without being able to remove it before it even breaks out.
That is a strong claim, and it deserves to be taken seriously. Kindness here is not a formula of politeness. It is a testable criterion: at each decision of daily life the question becomes whether this is the kind way, and the answer is almost always obvious.
The example that stings most
Sheikh Muhammad Said Raslan takes a very concrete case, and he aims at husbands.
He describes the man who sharply reproaches his wife for neglecting her appearance, while giving no thought to being unkempt at home, in work clothes, coming in smelling of sweat or cigarettes. His verdict: this is a failure in the wife's right.
And he cites Ibn Abbas, commenting on the verse of Surah al-Baqara about rights equivalent to duties: he liked to make himself attractive for his wife just as he liked her to do so for him.
This example is useful precisely because it is trivial. Reciprocity is not only played out in the great obligations, it is played out in the domestic detail no one is watching.
What justice means here
Sheikh al-Fawzan ties it all back to the justice Allah commanded, and he names what this reciprocity produces: it preserves the marriage and builds the family.
So it is not an accounting balance, where each keeps a ledger of what they gave. It is a condition of soundness. A home where one demands and the other complies does not hold, whatever the apparent legitimacy of the demands.