Assalm o Alaikum Eminent Sheikh I am very emotional and hasty person and often makes wrong decisions when I am in anger. I am marrying to a girl now and I am afraid that I might have some fight with her over any small issue and I utter the word of Talaq from my mouth unintentionally in anger. Therefore in my marriage Contract, I want to stipulate certain conditions of divorce as follows. If I divorce her against these conditions it will not be considered as a valid divorce. The conditions are as follows. 1 – Divorce from my side, even I gave her, in written or verbal, intentionally or unintentionally, will not be counted as valid if she is in menses, nifas or after she had sex with me in her purity. 2 – Divorce will not be valid unless it is accompanied by two pious and practicing Muslim males eye-witness. These male Muslims should not be fasiq or should not have any major haram things in their life. For example, they must pray 5 times, must not deal with riba, must have full beard etc. 3 - I can only divorce her one time and second or third divorce will not be counted as valid (even I spoke or wrote) unless I had made ruju from first divorce. Ruju will not be valid without two male muslim witness. 4 – Divorce given in anger will not be valid and the fatwa of Sheikh Ibn e Qayyim shall be followed in that case. 5 – Divorce under compulsion (ikra or jabr) will not be valid. Now from above conditions, which I want to made a part of my Contract marriage, I want to make sure that my divorce will only be valid if it follows 100 % what Allah and his Prophet has commanded to choose the way to divorce. If I divorce against these conditions it will not be counted as valid divorce as per marriage Contract. I want to ask you if it is halal to draw such marriage Contract. And after marrying with this marriage Contract, if I divorce her against the condition, shall this divorce will be valid is Islam ???

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger.

These conditions which you mentioned are of no effect [they should not be taken into account] because the issues that you raised are legal matters that have to be supported by evidence of Sharee’ah. There is an agreement that divorce does not take place in some of the cases that you mentioned, like divorce when one is very angry and totally loses his consciousness in a way that if he were asked ‘did you divorce’, he would reply that he does not know.

On the other hand, in some cases divorce takes place according to the agreement of the scholars like divorce in anger when the husband is conscious about what he says and he is able to control his behavior, and like divorce without witnesses as it also takes place as in Fatwa 133297.

In regard to the issues upon which there is a difference of opinion, if you have enough religious knowledge by which he can find out the preponderant opinion on the matter, then you should act according to that preponderant opinion. However, if you are not knowledgeable, then you should ask one of the people whom you trust in regard to their knowledge and religion and then you should act according to the Fatwa that he issues to you. Allaah Says (what means): {…so ask the people of the message if you do not know.}[Quran 16:43] For more benefit, please refer to Fataawa 121374 and 84647.

In addition to this, the issues where one has to look to the intention of the person, like the writing of the word of divorce, or writing a metaphor of divorce and the like, then what should be taken into account here is the intention that one has exactly when he utters the word of divorce, as regards the intention that one has before or after that, then it should not be taken into account.

To conclude, these conditions are of no effect. Since you know the origin of your problem, which is that you are emotional and make hasty decisions, then you should first of all seek the Help of Allaah and endeavor to rectify yourself so that you should not rush into taking decisions, and you should be rational. In fact, this is possible to achieve if you endeavor to do so. Abu Ad-Dardaa’ narrated that the Prophet said: “Knowledge is acquired by seeking it, and patience is gained by practising to be patient, whoever seeks to do good, Allaah will enable him to do so, and whoever avoids evil, Allaah will enable him to avoid it.” [At-Tabaraani and Al-Albaani said that it is a Saheeh Hadeeth] For more benefit, please refer to Fataawa 91040 and 86681.

Allaah Knows best.