Ruling On The Wife Of One Who Reviles Religion: Is A New Marriage Contract Required
Islamic Rulings -
Living Shariah Verdicts
Islamic Questions & Answers
I heard that if a man reviles religion, his wife
becomes divorced from him, and he has to repent, seek
forgiveness and do a new marriage contract. How true
is this?.
Praise be to Allaah.
Reviling religion is apostasy from Islam. The same
applies to reviling the Qur'aan or the Messenger
(blessings and peace of Allah be upon him): it is
apostasy from Islam, and kufr (disbelief) after faith
- we seek refuge with Allah. But it does not mean that
the wife is divorced (talaaq); rather they should be
separated without divorce. It cannot be divorce;
rather she becomes haraam for him because she is a
Muslim woman whereas he is a kaafir, and she remains
haraam for him until he repents. If he repents and her
‘iddah has not yet ended, she goes back to him without
any need for anything, i.e., if he repents and turns
back to Allah, she goes back to him. But if her ‘iddah
has ended and he has not repented, then she may marry
whomever she wants. That is like a divorce but it is
not a divorce (talaaq); rather it is like divorce
because Allah has forbidden Muslim women for kaafir
men.
If he repents after the ‘iddah has ended and he wants
to (re)marry her, there is nothing wrong with that,
but it should be done with a new marriage contract, so
as to be on the safe side and avoid an area concerning
which the scholars differed. Some scholars think that
she is permissible for him without a new marriage
contract: if she chose him and did not marry anyone
else after the ‘iddah ended, she remains as she was
(i.e., still married). However, the majority say that
when the ‘iddah ends, she becomes irrevocably divorced
from him and becomes a non-mahram to him, and she
cannot become permissible for him except with a new
marriage contract. So it is better and more on the
safe side to do a new marriage contract. This applies
if the ‘iddah ended before he repented. But if he
repents before the ‘iddah ends, then she is still his
wife, because the Prophet (blessings and peace of
Allah be upon him) accepted the marriage contracts of
men who became Muslim after their wives did, before
the wives' ‘iddahs ended. End quote.
Shaykh ‘Abd al-‘Azeez ibn Baaz (may Allah have mercy
on him)
Fataawa Noor ‘ala al-Darb, by Ibn Baaz, 1/106
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