I am in a very difficult situation and need your advice. I would really appreciate your response.
I am a newly married woman. My husband and I got into an argument whereby my husband sent me a text message stating ‘divorce’. We later had another argument a week later where things got heated and I was demanding a divorce from him as I was so upset, he didnt want to give me a divorce and was refusing to. I stupidly insisted but did not mean it as I never wanted to lose him, but eventually he said ‘I am divorcing you’ twice. The reason he did not say it three times was because he thought that it would end our marriage and did not want that. He said it to scare me and it did. Immediately after it was said I realised I was being stupid and we sorted out our differences.
A couple of days later my husband began thinking about the text message he had sent me and was worried that it may count as a divorce, I said he was being silly and it didnt. He found out from a mufti that it does count, which means that he has stated divorce to me three times.
My husband and I love each other very much and do not want be apart. I cant bear to be without him. He thinks that we are divorced irrevocably. We need advise on if the text message counts as one divorce and if the verbal divorce should be counted as two or one. I am absolutely going out of mind and am in a terrible state at the thought of losing my husband, because I never wanted a divorce and neither did he. It was my stupidity and arrogance that led him to divorce me.
I am not sure if you follow any madhab but I would also be grateful if you could tell me which school or group you follow as my husband thinks it is important to know.
Answer
We all have only one madhab which is Islam. How does it affect if my school of thought is any different from someone else’s? These schools of thought are nothing but different ways adopted by scholars to understand the religion of God. At the end of the day, we all want to know what the right opinion is.
The Quran specifies only one way of giving divorce. The rest are all wrong. A husband should give one divorce during his wife’s clean period and wait for the iddat to expire. If the iddat expires and he decides not to reconcile with her, the two depart. They can remarry if they mutually agree through a simple nikah. If he reconciles during iddat, they continue as husband and wife but the husband loses one of the two chances of divorce given to him by God. If he divorces a second time, he can again reconcile within the iddat period. This would consume his second right of divorce. He can’t do it a third time and reconcile.
If a husband says divorce three times, he has violated God’s commands for which he should be sorry. If he says he didn’t know that he was violating God’s command, his statement should be accepted and his three pronouncements should be considered one. You cannot destroy a home because of the ignorance of an individual.
In your case, only one divorce should be considered to have been given. Your husband can do ruju’ (reconcile) within the period of iddat.