Divorce in Islam

Islam hates divorce and discourages it. It advocates a permanent marriage. Islam also disliked divorce and made the necessary procedures to solve the social problems without resorting to divorce whenever it was possible. Such is the attitude of Islam towards divorce. But in life we see that love may be followed by disliked and agreement by disagreement. Islam is realistic and accepts divorce as a final solution.

A divorce is only permissible twice after that parties should either hold together on equitable terms or separate with kindness. Divorce is a medicine of bitter taste but the problem of disagreement is worse and crueler. Doctors sometimes amputate a part of the human body in order to save the other parts.

Divorce is far better than the case in the west when the relations between husband and wife become very bad. There is no way of reconciliation. Therefore each one of the couple would look for a friend. The wife goes with a boyfriend and the husband goes with a girlfriend. That's because none of them can marry someone else before divorce. Divorce is very hard to attain. The solution then would be disloyalty.

Some of the European countries realized at last that divorced are a reasonable measure. So, they facilitated getting it. The last of these European countries was Italy which permitted divorce in 1971. More than one million cases of divorce took place as soon as the act of divorces was passed in Italy. Here we have to imagine the misery of life of a million families before divorce was permissible. All those families had lived in wretchedness and schism. That led naturally to an illegal social system, the system of having mistresses which the European communities suffer from. We should also imagine what would have happened if the two parts could use the right of divorce after trying every way of reconciliation. They would have enjoyed their life and formed a happy family, which is a sound block of the society.

Islam keeps divorce in the hand of men because he is responsible for the family. The marriage bond is the basis of all this and it would be very dangerous to put this bond in an irresponsible hand. We know that it is natural in women to be very reactive and sensitive for the most trivial things. Had the divorce right been in the woman's hand, she then have behaved very rashly and endangered the life of the family.