Islamic Law and Divorce

Islamic Law and Divorce

1985 8 August 4-5 Islamic Law and Divorce (614) The family is a very complex unit. Its continued existence depends on a clear understanding of what is meant by the family as an institution and maintaining a proper balance of all its constituent elements. The slightest imbalance can upset the whole system.

Such problems arose in connection with marriage and divorce in Western societies, because of misapprehensions regarding the conjugal state that laws had to be passed in order to reform traditional concepts which were no longer relevant to the modern context. One such law made it incumbent upon a man who divorced his wife to pay her a heavy sum and, in addition, to make regular payments of alimony till her death.

This law was passed obviously to reform family life, but it proved to have the opposite effect. When people saw that the business of divorce involved great financial difficulties, there began a trend to do away with the marriage bond altogether. Men and women started to live together without going through the formality of the marriage ceremony. Now more than 50 percent of the younger generation prefers to live in the unmarried state.

Bertrand Russell, one of Britain’s most outstanding intellectuals, married and divorced three times on grounds of intellectual incompatibility. This proved to be a costly bargain, and he suffered great financial setbacks because he had to pay his wives enormous sums as the law demanded. He writes in his Autobiography:

“ ... the financial burden was heavy and rather disturbing: I had given £10,000 of my Nobel Prize cheque for a little more than £11,000 to my third wife, and I was now paying alimony to her and to my second wife as well as paying for the education of my younger son. Added to this, there were heavy expenses in connection with my elder son’s illness; and the income taxes which for many years he had neglected to pay now fell to me to pay.” Bertrand Russell, Autobiography, Unwin Paperbacks (London) 1978, pp. 563-64.

The Islamic law concerning marriage and divorce takes into account every aspect of family life. It does not make undue concessions to one party at the cost of the other. When men and women come together, they vow to live together for life but, at times, for various reasons, one or the other party is compelled to opt for separation. For such occasions Islam has provided clear instructions so that the separation is effected in an environment of good will. The husband is held responsible for the maintenance of the divorced wife for a period of three months in normal conditions, and for a longer period in case the woman is pregnant. After this fixed period the husband is not legally bound for providing her maintenance. This principle does not lay such an inordinate burden on men as to lead them to consider the marriage bond irksome to the point of being intolerable. There is no compulsion then for them to flout convention and fall into immoral ways.

This Islamic principle may cause suffering to some women in exceptional cases, but such instances are exceptions, not rules.

It is an established principle followed by all the law-making bodies of the world that laws should be formed according to general requirements rather than complying to an exaggerated degree with exceptional requirements.

Howsoever elaborately a law is framed; it is seldom that it can cover every single aspect of the human condition, and every set of circumstances which can occur in life. There will always be loopholes and exceptions which can create moral and legal problems. Such cases are always treated entirely on their individual merits on a moral or social level throughout the world.