Those who hold that three divorces pronounced in a single sitting count as one generally offer the following interpretations of the decision of Hazrat Umar (may Allah be pleased with him):
1. Curbing divorce: Hazrat Umar (RA) enforced three divorces as three so that the tendency to divorce would decrease in society.
This interpretation is unreasonable. If curbing divorce had been the aim, the enforcement of even a single divorce would have been abolished altogether. Treating one as three only makes more divorce take effect.
2. Discretionary punishment (ta'zir): This was not a ruling of the Shariah but a punishment for those who pronounced three divorces at once.
The enforcement of three divorces does not affect the husband alone; it affects the wife as well. If this is a punishment, then the wife is being punished along with the husband, even though she never adopted this innovated (bid'ah) method.
3. An administrative decision: Hazrat Umar (RA) made this decision in his capacity as caliph, not as a permanent ruling of the Shariah.
Even an ordinary person can see that if the ruling of the Shariah is one, and the caliph himself decrees three, this still amounts to changing the ruling of the Shariah. Is it permissible even for a caliph to issue a decision, even a temporary one, against a ruling established by the Shariah? Clearly not.
4. Temporary expediency (maslahah): It was a temporary decision made in view of particular social conditions, and is not binding for every age.
What expediency is this? In Islam, preserving the home can be an expediency, but what expediency is there in separation? That would rather be counted as contrary to expediency.
5. The Companions' administrative concurrence: The Companions did not oppose Hazrat Umar's (RA) decision because they accepted the caliph's administrative authority, not because a consensus (ijma') had formed on counting three divorces as three.
This too raises a question: is it within the caliph's authority, even administratively, to issue a decision against a ruling established by Allah and His Messenger?
6. Changed circumstances: The social conditions of the Prophetic era and the era of Umar differed, so the application of the ruling changed.
Does a change in circumstances completely reverse a clearly established matter, so that a decision is pronounced against an established ruling without any basis at all?
Most of these explanations and interpretations are similarly unreasonable, even though some of them are reported from a few eminent scholars.
The real point is this: the basis for counting three as three already existed in the Shariah, and Hazrat Umar enforced that very basis. Outwardly, three were taken as three; and if conclusive proof was found that someone had intended one rather than three, it was counted as one. But when people began, by custom, to pronounce it as three, Hazrat Umar suspended the additional judicial procedure, namely establishing whether the intention had been only one, and ordered that it be taken at its outward meaning. Otherwise it would follow that Hazrat Umar (RA) changed the Shariah, and that the Companions, the Successors, the Successors of the Successors and the jurists of the Ummah went on accepting it. In reality, he kept the spirit of the Shariah in view: enforcing the outward meaning absolutely once establishing proof of the inner intention had become difficult. And this is how it will continue.