Question

I need to ask a very important question about divorce. After giving myself and my wife adequate time and chances I came to the conclusion that it’s not in our social and religious benefit to live together as a husband and wife, so I am planning to divorce and as per best of my knowledge I want to do it according to Islamic law. I know that I can divorce only when she has had period and when she is clean and I don’t touch her after the period, but the problem is that my wife didn’t have period this month and her doctor says it could be because of pregnancy or other reasons. If there is some other reason for not having period then it must be ok by next month. My question is what if she is pregnant and I still want to divorce her? If she is pregnant there would be two options, abortion or to keep the baby. In either case can you explain what is the Islamic way of divorce? Can we divorce during pregnancy? And if abortion is done do we still need to wait for the next period (menstruation cycle) or we can do it right after abortion? Also add one more thing that if wife is not ready to give right information about her pregnancy or period what should we do in that case?

Answer

I understand that you know that the divorce should be the last option and we must exhaust all other efforts to keep the family united before taking this extreme step. May God help you take good decision and make it better for both of you!

As to your questions it is clear that one can divorce his wife during pregnancy. The only thing is that the iddah would extend to the delivery and you would have to keep the wife with you until the end of the iddah.

Since the underlying reason behind the directive to divorce the wife when she is not having her period is to make it possible that the iddah is known in such a way that we are sure that the wife is not pregnant one can divorce the wife after an abortion because the status of the womb is clear. In this case the iddah would simply be three months. This view is based on the Qru’anic directive regarding the women who are in menopause and those who are not experiencing menstrual cycles due to some medical reasons. The Qur’an says that there iddah is three months.

Answered by: Tariq Mahmood Hashmi

Date: 2015-02-14