I have been asked by a lady, she was a Christian and become a Muslim. Her husband is atheist as she told me. I told her up to my knowledge is after she become a Muslim automatically become divorced from her husband. Am I right in this? If she becomes a Muslim she will have to be divorced from her husband. Is that what you want? I’ll explain. I told her she is automatically divorced. I’ll explain that. Please come. You know this concept of marriage has been very narrowly treated by the Muslim clergy. And they are not right in that regard.
The fact is the institution of marriage according to Islam is not a limited religious institution. It belongs to all humanity. And those marriages which are held variously are held to be right in Islam according to their customs if nothing underhand is adopted. If not so, then the marriages of those idolaters prior to Islam were to be held illegal. Because they had no right to unite as husband and wife because their way of marriage was un-Islamic and irreligious. So their offsprings, what would be there? Illegal, illegitimate. So will that be the fate of all the Muslims who became companions of the Holy Prophet, peace be upon him? It’s impossible. The marriages were legalized.
Every marriage according to Islam is a legal contract. Whether it is held according to Islamic way of life or in any other way of life. This is why the first verse which is recited on the Nikah ceremony which was chosen by Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, himself addresses not Muslims but mankind as such. Arabic That is the beauty of the Islamic message. Instead of addressing just the believers, the first address is to the whole mankind. That is to establish that all the rights which bring man and woman together in the bondage of husband and wife according to Islam are rightful ways. But the Muslims are expected to rise beyond this common bondage. So the second address is to the believers in which particular teaching is mentioned which raises their status beyond the ordinary human beings who come into the marriage contract.
So in the second verse it says, Arabic And so on and so forth. So I’ll come to one question which might be agitating your mind. I’ll explain that. Number one, whatever marriage is held outside Islam according to Islam is a valid marriage and there is a valid contract according to their customs. Number two, the second part I’m coming to, if one of those becomes a Muslim, what would happen? Now if you stick to this verdict of the ulema that the moment a kafir becomes a Muslim, if he’s a male, he has to divorce his wife. If she’s a female, then she has to be divorced from the husband. If that is the established norm, then Islam can never be a preaching religion.
It becomes impossible for such a religion to be accepted by the whole mankind where suddenly even if the couple has reached an old age, an old couple with so many grandchildren and so on and family relationships, one of them suddenly accepts Islam and the wife is divorced or the husband is divorced. Why? Because the marriage contract is illegal. If that marriage contract remains legal, then it shouldn’t make any difference. So this can’t be the teachings of a universal religion. There has to be something wrong somewhere which is misunderstood. The reality is that Islam is to be seen in various historical backgrounds.
There was a time of peace at the time of the Prophet ﷺ and there was also a time of war. During the time of war and during the time of that peace in which Muslims were persecuted by the enemy, the enemy had fully deserved the same treatment which was emitted out to Muslims. And this is a common law of justice mentioned in the Holy Quran that if you are maltreated by certain people, even if that treatment is not acceptable to Allah as such, as a normal practice, the persecuted person has a full right to at least take his revenge in that much so that he treats the person who ill-treats him in exactly the same way and pays him in the same coin.
So it is during that period that we see instances of such judgments passed by Prophet Muhammad ﷺ on the people. For instance, now I’ll specify my point. The idolaters, those who persecuted Prophet Muhammad ﷺ during his Meccan life for 13 years, they made it a rule that if a woman accepts Islam, she was divorced forcefully. This is why Prophet Muhammad ﷺ’s own daughter was made to be divorced by the husband, by those people, not by Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.
He did not insist. And it is still quoted as an expression of cruelty on the part of idolaters, Mushrikeen of Mecca, that look, an innocent lady was forcefully divorced by the Meccan elders just because she had accepted Islam or she happened to be the daughter of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. But as long as she remained after her Islam, of course she accepted Islam in the beginning, with that idolater husband, there is not one single evidence that Prophet Muhammad ﷺ told her to leave the husband and come to him.
So if that was the true teaching of Islam, regardless of the situation, then in the first instance, Prophet Muhammad ﷺ should have told her that your husband is no longer legal for you, leave him and come to me or go anywhere, but you can’t live as husband and wife with the same husband. This happened at the time of Meccan life, but after Hijrah too, one of the son-in-laws of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ who migrated after Hijrah to Mecca, to Medina, and accepted Islam after he was imprisoned. You know he came to wage war against Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, but ultimately he accepted Islam. His marriage was not repeated. His Nikah was not repeated.
If that was the position held by Prophet Muhammad ﷺ that automatically, if somebody changes his religion to Islam, and his marriage is nullified, then a new Nikah should have been performed. In fact, the husband of that lady, the daughter of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, was permitted to stay the night in the same house where she lived. Although she was told by Prophet Muhammad ﷺ not to indulge in matrimonial relationship, but he was permitted to live under the same roof. If that person had become a haram or totally forbidden, this license could not have been given to him. So, looking at what happened in this light, I can safely infer that Islam is not a narrow-minded and a bigoted religion. Islam condones and also accepts all the rights of various people with regards to such practices as are common between all men, whatever their religion or race be. This is the grand attitude of Islam towards this thing.
But also we see instances in the lifetime of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, and also we see instances in the Holy Qur’an, clear verses, which tell that the ladies should not be reverted who have accepted Islam to the kuffar and they are haram upon them. It is very clearly mentioned. So, why so? Because, as I have said, the explanation lies in the fact that the kuffar treated Muslim women exactly in the same manner. And because they have forfeited their own right by behaving cruelly and unjustly to the Muslim ladies, so they deserve this treatment themselves by their own practice.
So, this is how we can bring all these various incidents opposing and apparently paradoxical incidents into one whole. So, as I said, Islam permits the marriages to continue intact if there is no hostility, if there is no compulsion in religion. If a lady has accepted Islam and her husband does not interfere with her religion, does not force her to abandon the practice, then Islam considers that marriage legal and it is not automatically undone. If the husband interferes with the religion of the lady, then immediately he becomes unacceptable in the eyes of Islam. Because religion has the priority and that laa ikraha fi deen is the overruling dictate of Islam.
So, such marriages stand absolved automatically where a husband or a wife begin to interfere with the other person’s religion and imposes it upon him. This was the situation to which those verses apply and in which A.S. passed the verdict. Where there was no interference, he did not pass this verdict. And for that Islamic teaching is not for you to force a separation. Otherwise, you know, there will be so much chaos in the human society. Islam is a universal religion. It has to preach, it has to spread in all corners of the earth. So, what would be the creation of this teaching? The whole society would be disrupted. Every house would be bifurcated and separated.
So, Islam is a natural religion. It’s not a religion of takleef. It’s a religion of ease and comfort and common sense. So, from every point of view, this is my considered opinion, that the Muslim scholars have erred in inferring from certain verses and certain practices of tradition that automatically the marriages are absorbed.
