Full Lecture Transcript (Cleaned)
Divorce when a spouse is unreachable — 0:00
our next question uh an anonymous husband emails or i should say the husband wishes to remain anonymous and uh he says that after an argument with his wife his wife abruptly left the household went back to her parents in another land and cut off all contact with him uh that he has no means of getting in contact with his wife and he is saying how can a divorce now be finalized when uh one of the spouses is not present one the response to this is that first and foremost i urge you to you know i mean obviously it is mandatory for me to say so and it is a part of our islamic etiquettes as well that don't give up hope see if some type of surah can be done always as allah says bringing about reconciliation is good make dua to allah and see if if it's best nonetheless if the both of you feel uh that there is no hope or if one of them has clearly indicated by what has just occurred and you are literally not in a position you do not even know how to get in contact with your wife and whatnot then in reality technically speaking for a husband to divorce his wife it is not a condition that she be present in front of him he may divorce her during obviously a time frame where he's allowed to divorce her what i mean by this is a purity between her two men says that they have not been intimate and according to the question many months if not even a year has gone by since she has left and so clearly that is not an issue and therefore he may uh pronounce divorce and inform two close family friends or two witnesses that he has divorced this this lady and i am sure there are some mutual friends i'm sure you know facebook or something you can figure out give get the message across that where it has begun and the id there will begin from the moment the divorce is pronounced it doesn't matter even if they have not been together for an entire year the iddah is not related to when intimacy last occurred the iddha is related to when the talaq was verbalized and finalized and initiated so when the husband initiates the talaq and he says i have divorced her and the two witnesses are told uh this time frame that is when the ida begins and after three menstrual cycles then she is free to remarry if she is in the similar position i.e if she is the one whose you know spouse has abandoned her husband has left her which is unfortunately also a very common occurrence dare i say more common than the case that has come to me now that if a man simply abandons his wife and cuts off all contact obviously first and foremost the man is doubly sinful i mean for a woman to do this is obviously not good for a man to do this is even far more unethical because the man is obligated to take care of his wife financially and the man is obligated to provide for his wife for a man to simply abandon his wife and simply uh abscond if you like in this manner uh no doubt this is uh a level of cowardice to be honest and a level of unethical behavior that is simply unbefitting of any uh decent human being much less somebody who claims to believe in allah and the follow the messenger sallallahu alaihi he was if a husband you know acts in this manner and a woman is left without any contact i don't know where my husband is and she is aware that he has abandoned her we're not talking about a scenario where once upon a time husbands would travel for work or whatnot and we don't know what's there's no contact there's no cell phones no we know from the context that the husband has literally abandoned his wife and has wants nothing to do with her in this case if she's in a muslim land she goes to an islamic court the court will annul the marriage this is not a talaq this is a fasc there's multiple ways to annul the marriage you have the which comes from the husband you have the which is what the wife initiates and gives the money back and then you have the fact which is from a third party the judge will annul the marriage because of circumstances like the one that um i've hypothesized where the husband abandons the wife so in this case a third party if it's an islamic country it will be a a court if it is not an islamic country she may go to the regular channels of you know non-muslim courts but she must also go to uh a muslim sheikh or alam or local scholar or community or masjid and verify from them that yes all the conditions have been met and they will then take the role of the judge and they will pronounce that in this particular case we have attempted to contact the husband it is clear he has abandoned the wife he is not taking care of her he is not sending any money to her and so he has completely been negligent in his duties as a husband and therefore they shall issue a fact an annulment and an announcement is one month not three so once the annulment takes place one cycle she will observe then one month meaning if she doesn't have romances if she has her menses it will be one cycle and after that she may then remarry so the bottom line to answer your question it is not a condition for the spouse to be physically present for a divorce to take place that it is possible for a divorce to be uh initiated by the husband or an annulment to be initiated by the wife even if the other party is not present foreign