Question:
My husband is unemployed since the day we got married. I have been living with my father since 2006. I haven’t met or seen my husband in 9 years, I would like to know if I should divorce him. I don’t see circumstances getting better. There are no children
Answer:
wa `alaykum salam,
Why have you waited so long to seek any imam to conclude your divorce? He is out of pocket not fulfilling his role as husband as Mawlana Shaykh Hisham explained:
If you want to take the opinions of open-minded scholars like Mawlana Shaykh Nazim (q), he said “it’s over”. It’s over, because the contract is breached from one side, and then there is separation through the years, so that also makes it over. So he doesn’t go along with khula (being needed), because he considers it’s finished.
Islamically, if he didn’t show up for nine months, you can make khula from far, because he didn’t come in these two years to America. When you do khula, you don’t need to wait from his side to divorce, it’s already done. Mawlana Shaykh Nazim (q) said, and he is mujaddid (renewer) in Islam, and you see lots of these problems in the West, where the husband doesn’t divorce and the wife is left behind. So he said, “Marriage is a contract: if one of the sides does not want to continue that marriage, that contract is broken, it doesn’t exist anymore, it’s gone.” So he gave permission to those people who are in the West to divorce through the court, even through the Western system. They apply for divorce and they continue in the Islamic way as well by khula, without waiting for the husband to give them divorce.
Taher Siddiqui
