Divorce given by a bipolar husband Fatwa No: 157461
- Fatwa Date:25-5-2011
Aslaam Aleikum, i have been married for14yrs and have childern(4) to a man who reverted to islam(from judisim)during these years i have straggle to keep teaching him at the best of my knowledge,salah fasting, manners etc even to seek help from sheikhs to help him and he does agree to get help then after a short while he stops seening whoever is helping him and goes back to his own ways of not praying off and on not interest in practising etc. sometimes he makes basphymy statements,which one statement made him come out of islam and was told by a sheikh he has to take shahadah,which he did,shorty after we got divorced and my idah expired he begged me to take him back and he will change,i took him back on conditions which we both agreed to and we went to shariah courts and the qadh married us with those conditions,Allamdulilah! we have been planning to go for Umrah many times and every time he brings excuses or he will say i really want to go to umrah,when i take the intiative to look for a hamalla, he start saying balsmphy saying i don't want to go to these places(refering to Umrah) and very bad statements come out of his lips whent it to umrah saying like i am forcing him to go to these places he doesn't want to. and i ask him why he says and acts like this,his replys is always because i am a sick man i suffer from bi-porlar and this is the excuses he always use, but he function at his work perfectly and other matters too,but when it comes to matters of religion home matters he behaviour is very bad and he says it's because"i am a sick man" Last week over the Umrah subject he told me "i decree/decreed we are divorce" and i will marry some else.then afer that he called me and said "now that am divorce from you i am allowed to marry some else" my reply to that was you didn't not have to divorce me to marry, you are allowed 4 wives. the next day he went to the sheikh and told him brief what happened, the sheikh told he has taken back.can i continue to be his wife
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.
If that man has bipolar disorder, which is a psychological disease, then we cannot authoritatively say whether or not his divorce took place because he might have pronounced divorce while he is not conscious of what he says. Also, he might have said a word of Kufr [a word that takes him out of the fold of Islam] while in this state, so it is not possible to authoritatively say that he went out of the fold of Islam. Therefore, it is better in such a case to take the matter to an Islamic court.
Nonetheless, we may say in general that if a husband divorces his wife and it was not the third divorce, he is permitted to take her back without a new contract as long as she is still in her waiting period. In case her waiting period expires, he is not permitted to take her back except with a new contract. For more benefit on the kinds of divorce, please refer to Fatwa 82541.
Besides, if a husband says to his wife ‘we are divorced’, then this is a clear statement of divorce, because clear divorce is uttering the word of divorce to one’s wife with the exception of the imperative and present forms of the verb “divorce” which do not lead to divorce, as stated by the jurists.
On the other hand, abandoning the prayer is one of the most serious matters as some jurists are of the view that a person who abandons the prayer even out of negligence goes out of the fold of Islam. For more benefit, please refer to Fatwa 84235.
Finally, it should be noted that the statements which you mentioned as examples of the blasphemous expressions which your husband utters are not clear statements that take one out of the fold of Islam. So, he should not be accused of Kufr [going out of the fold of Islam] just because of uttering them, like his statement that he does not want to go for ‘Umrah.
Allaah Knows best.