Feels oppressed by her husband
Fatwa No: 89282

Question

Allaah has commanded the man to maintain his family. The scholars say be patient with our mates. When does patient turn into stupidity. Muslimah has been married for 5 years; the husband who has two wives only financially supports the home of the first wife. Their is no division of time. Please help me to understand, it would seems that the scholars have stress being patient so much, Muslims are using it as a justification to do wrong. Whenever I speak to my husband about these issues he tells me to be patient and just trust that Allaah's knows what's in his heart. Am I doing believe that as long as you say you have the intention to responsible, you really don't have to be because your intentions didn't work out. How long a wife should be oppressed? My husband has resorted to making a mockery of this deed.

Answer

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. We ask Allaah to exalt his mention as well as that of his family and all his companions.

 

The scholars often advise the spouses to be patient over the misconduct or misbehaviour of one towards the other in order to reconcile between them and so that marital life would continue rather than divorce taking place. In most cases divorce is of a greater harm. However, many spouses realize this after they had divorced, especially if they had children who suffered from this divorce. So the scholars look to the objectives of the Islamic Law and do not favour one spouse over the other. Scholars may sometimes rule that divorce is better when marital life has become very bad and when a husband or wife can no longer bear the hardship of staying with the other. What has been said applies as well to your husband in relation to you as he is unjust between you and the first wife in relation to providing for you and spending the night with you. If this is the case, then your husband has committed a sin even if his intention was to be just amongst yourselves. If the means of reconciliation are of no avail then you have to be wise in balancing between the benefit of staying with him and the benefit of asking divorce from him as a way of repelling the harm from you.

Allaah Knows best.

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