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Telling the wife that one is thinking of divorce

Answered as per Hanafi Fiqh by Muftionline.co.za

Q: I have a question about an event that took part almost two months ago but the question came in my mind this week. About two months ago, my wife and I got in a very heated argument and I got extremely mad. Due to my anger, I wanted to emotionally upset her so I told her that I am thinking of divorce (honestly speaking, the thought or idea of divorce did come up, but I didn’t want to do it – I only mentioned it to her so I could emotionally upset her). So, she started crying. Then, I told her that if I write it on my arm, then it will take place. Then, I wrote “Thinking of divorce” on my right arm and since she was crying (and couldn’t see), I told her, “Well, I wrote it…” (I did write the word divorce, but the complete phrase was ‘Thinking of Divorce’ and she couldn’t see the full phrase. The only reason I did this was, again, to emotionally upset her). Then, after maybe two minutes, she read the phrase and said “What does this mean?” I told her that I only wrote “Thinking of divorce” so I could threaten her and upset her. Then, after about a few hours when we calmed down, we both apologised and we both moved on. However, the question came to my mind did this actually count as a divorce at all or not? I asked my wife and she thinks that maybe this counted as the first divorce that was revoked. I, on the other hand, due to my intention to not divorce her at all, do not think this was actually a divorce. Moreover, she was near her menses and we had relations before that, so I knew I would have to wait until after her menses to actually divorce her (but again, I never intended on doing that). So does this count as a divorce?

Bismillaah

A: It does not count as a divorce. But in future don’t ever experiment with these things. It can have serious implications.

And Allah Ta’ala (الله تعالى) knows best.

Answered by:

Mufti Ebrahim Salejee (Isipingo Beach)

This answer was collected from MuftiOnline.co.za, where the questions have been answered by Mufti Zakaria Makada (Hafizahullah), who is currently a senior lecturer in the science of Hadith and Fiqh at Madrasah Ta’leemuddeen, Isipingo Beach, South Africa.

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