Be careful about the devil's whispers about divorce

26-3-2009 | IslamWeb

Question:

Salaam alay kum, I have a few questions related to divorce. Can you please tell me if any kind of divorce will take place in scenarios defined below: 1. I was having discussion with my wife regarding a possible divorce in future. I did not use the word 'Divorce' and just said that "We can try to see if things work lets say for 6 months or 1 year and if not then we should go seperate ways". Does this fall under any form of conditional divorce? I did not have any intention to issue any conditional divorce at the time of making that statement and rather it was just a discussion about future possibility of divorce. 2. Discussing possibility of divorce with other family members or even with my wife and using statements such as "I dont want to live with you" or "We will go separate ways", will any such statements going to cause divorce? 3. Lastly, lately I worry too much about the fiqh laws associated to divorce as I have read too many fatwas. I have read about conditional and implied divorce etc. So now when I say a statement like 'Allah Hafiz' or 'Good Bye' to my wife, right after saying it a thought pops in my head that did I just divorce her by this statement. The thought almost happens immediately after I utter the statement even though I did not intend to issue any divorce (implied or conditional). Will this situation be considered divorce? Jazzak Allah
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 sallallaahu `alayhi wa sallam ( may Allaah exalt his mention ) is His slave and Messenger.

 

First of all, we like to draw your attention to an important matter which is that in principle the marital bond between you and your wife is still valid unless you are certain that something which requires the end of such a bond took place. This is indeed a firm principle to which you should hold fast as it protects you from such whispers and closes the door of the devil’s seduction. You should avoid whispers in regard to divorce and seek the refuge of Allaah from the devil as much as you can. If it happens that you have many whispers about divorce then do not take them into consideration.

As regards the saying of a husband to his wife ‘we should go separate ways’ then this does not lead to divorce whether or not he conditioned it on something else, because this expression is only a promise of divorce. Similarly, his statement ‘we will go separate ways’ takes the same ruling. As for his statement ‘I don’t want to live with you’, it does not lead to divorce unless he intended divorce.

Moreover, the expressions ‘Allaah Hafiz’ and ‘good bye’ do not lead to divorce if you did not intend divorce when you uttered them, and there is an agreement on this among the scholars may Allaah have mercy upon them.

Finally, we advise you to be very careful about the matter of divorce and endeavour to solve your problems without uttering such expressions; good words yield good fruits.

Allaah Knows best.

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