Asalaam U Alaikum Ya Mufti Ebrahim,
I have been suffering from an extreme form of wasawis of the shaytaan regarding divorce(But this question is regarding kufr and nikah). I am certain that I have never given my wife any sareeh or kinaya form of divorce and In Shaa Allah I never will. but here is my question
1) On one occasion, a few months ago; I remember that I had an argument with my wife in which I raised my hands on her due to her constant disrespect and harsh words. My family then got involved and I had informed them of a few hadiths about where our prophet saw granted permission to beat the wives if they become courageous towards the husbands and also about why nobody should get involved in my marriage issues because umar ra narrated that the prophet saw said that ”a man will not be asked as to why he beat his wife”.
They rejected the hadiths and all proceeded to call me names and this made me get angry and when speaking/arguing with my wife later. I told her that I was doubtful now about Allah’s love and mercy, and that if he really loved our prophet pbuh and umar ra and the sahabaa, then why wouldn’t he defend me against those who reject these clear evidences that i am bringing them, which come from Allah’s beloved nabi saw. this is the only doubt I had. I then started to see my wife getting upset that I am thinking like this, and in order to calm her down and make her feel like apologising to me and to make her realise what wrong she has done to me, her husband.
I continued to say: ”I disbelieve in Allah, I disbelieve in your Allah, because if he really loved your prophet, then he would defend me for defending the words of our prophet.” I said something like this, not entirely sure. But I am certain that I didnt mean it, and I only uttered those words over a few occasions to calm her down and after we sorted our problems out, I never uttered such things again. And I am certain that when I was uttering those words, I felt a wierd feeling in my stomach and chest because I knew I didnt mean those words. and about 10minutes later, when we were about to sleep. I became paranoid and asked Allah to forgive me because i didnt mean it and only said it to make my wife feel upset and never make her disrespect me again for trying to follow our prophet or sahaba.
I am certain that I only had a doubt about Allah’s love and mercy in a moment of anger and depression. And I am certain that I never meant the direct words of kufr that left my mouth. I did say the shahadah again many times after saying those meaningless words of kufr out of being paranoid.
few weeks later, my wife did the same strategy on me and she uttered similar words but she only doubted Allah’s fairness(justice) and indirectly insulted umar ra. but she also swore by Allah that she didnt mean those and only said those to make me behave correctly and treat her correctly due to my lack of patience and aggression.
we both agreed that we didnt mean it and just to be on the safe side we resaid our shahadah.
months later, now.
I noticed a few answers from the scholars saying that anybody who becomes a murtad or does/says an act of kufr, they must do their nikah again and renew their emaan again.
and this is why we are paranoid because we are certain that we didnt mean it.
we didn’t think uttering such words were haraam because we didnt believe what we were saying and we didn’t know the consequences.
so did we become murtads? even though we didnt mean it and only said it to strike fear in each other and correct each others way using a bad method? we treated it as the permitted form of lying to make peace between two people. we tried to make peace between us by lying about what we think of our religion due to our circumstances. so did that make us murtads? and do we have to re do our nikah? because we didn’t know it was haraam as it was to benefit each others akhlaaq and strike fear in each others heart because neither of us wanted to be the reason why our husband/wife lose faith in Allah as our aim is to live peacefully and go jannah together.
Please answer if I am exempt from such consequences of redoing nikah because we didnt mean our statements and only said them to benefit each other, this all happened around 3 months ago and we just found out now that ”IF” those false statements of kufr made us murtad, then we have to do nikah again. we were unaware of it being haraam as we had good intention and didnt mean it and unaware of the consequences of the nikah contract. deep inside we knew that we didnt mean the statements of disbelief.
Note: My wife is also nearly 5 months pregnant incase this affects the circumstances in anyway.
In the Name of Allaah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
As-salaamu ‘alaykum wa-rahmatullaahi wa-barakaatuh.
Brother in Islaam,
In principle, it is kufr to willingly utter words of kufr; such an takes one out of the fold of Islaam and annuls his marriage. We advise both of you to make tawbah and istighaar and repeat your shahaadahs and renew your nikaah. In the future, think before you speak. If there is a need to admonish one another, adopt logical and rational methods. Seek marriage counseling if needed. Don’t jeopardize your imaan by making such comments[1].
And Allaah Ta’aala Knows Best.
Muajul I. Chowdhury
Student, Darul Iftaa
Astoria, New York, USA
Checked and Approved by,
Mufti Ebrahim Desai.
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[1] الفتاوى الهندية (2/ 283)
رجل كفر بلسانه طائعا وقلبه مطمئن بالإيمان يكون كافرا ولا يكون عند الله مؤمنا كذا في فتاوى قاضي خان ما كان في كونه كفرا اختلاف فإن قائله يؤمر بتجديد النكاح وبالتوبة والرجوع عن ذلك بطريق الاحتياط