I am a married woman living in Sudan and my husband lives in Saudi Arabia. He swore that if I did certain things which he dislikes, and he listed them for me, I would be divorced. I promised him not to do these things in order not to let the divorce come into effect. However, over the course of time, I did these things many times.
What is the Sharee‘ah (Islamic law) ruling on this case?
Am I now divorced? If yes, then do the three pronouncements of divorce take place bearing in mind that I did these things many times, which means that I am divorced three times or is it counted as one divorce? It should be taken into consideration that he does not know yet that I disobeyed him. Please advise as soon as possible since I am about to leave to go to him in Saudi Arabia and I do not know whether I am lawful for him or not.

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, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, is His Slave and Messenger.

The wife doing something is the condition of this divorce. So, when she does this thing, she will be divorced. If the condition consists of doing more than one thing, then, it will only come into effect by doing all the things that were conditioned by the husband. For instance, a man says to his wife, “If you eat such and such you would be divorced.”

Ibn Qudaamah said in Al-Mughni, “According to the majority of scholars, if the husband conditions divorce by two things, then it will not be effected until both of them take place.” When the wife does these things, she would be divorced only once, no matter how many times she does these things, as the condition is no longer valid as soon as the divorce comes into effect once. Doing the act mentioned under the stipulated condition during ‘Iddah (waiting period) or after the effectuation of divorce has no effect. However, if the wording of the condition contains something that denotes repetition such as "whenever "; then, whenever the condition takes place, that would be counted as one instance when the wife would be divorced.

If the husband said to his wife, “If you do any of these things, you would be divorced”, then the divorce would be effected by doing any of those things and the condition would have no more effect. In other words, if the wife does any of these things again, divorce would not be effected the second time she does this thing.

The fact that the husband has repeated this conditional divorce more than once does not affect the number of times the divorce comes into effect as long as this happens before the wife does anything the husband has ordered her not to do.

In light of the aforementioned clarification, we hope that the ruling becomes clear for the questioner, Allaah willing. We bring to her attention that she has to tell her husband about what she did because he knows his intention behind the wording of this conditional divorce as well as other things that decide the number of times divorce should be effected. Moreover, this should make him alert before pronouncing divorce in future.

Allaah Knows best.