Islam & the Modern World · Family, Marriage & Divorce

Divorce: serious, and allowed

Handle with care. Handle with care: do not use the widely quoted "most hateful permissible thing" hadith as a proof without noting the dispute over its grading.

In short

• 1.Divorce is permitted but described as the most disliked of permitted things in a widely quoted report; treat its grading honestly.
• 2.The Qur'an builds in a cooling-off period, arbitration and maintenance rather than instant separation.
• 3.A woman can end a marriage: khul by returning the dowry, or faskh through a judge.

The claim being examined

Islam is often portrayed either as trapping women in marriage or as letting men discard wives with three words.

The Islamic position

Islam permits divorce and regulates it: a waiting period, arbitration by both families, maintenance during iddah, and a woman's own right to end the marriage through khul or a judicial divorce.

Analysis

Two accuracy points matter here. First, the popular hadith "the most hateful of permissible things to Allah is divorce" is narrated by Abu Dawud (2178) and Ibn Majah (2018); a number of hadith critics classified it as weak (da'if) or mursal, while others accepted it, and al-Albani graded it sahih in some of his works and weak elsewhere. Do not build the argument on it — the Qur'anic material is stronger and sufficient. Second, the Qur'anic procedure is deliberately slow: divorce is pronounced at a prescribed time (Q 65:1), followed by an iddah of roughly three menstrual cycles during which the wife remains in the marital home and maintained, and reconciliation remains open; where breakdown is feared, Q 4:35 appoints an arbitrator from each family before any separation. The woman's exit is real and documented from the Prophetic period: the wife of Thabit ibn Qays came to the Prophet, peace be upon him, saying she found no fault in her husband's religion or character but could not remain with him, and he directed the return of the garden given as her mahr and the marriage was dissolved (Sahih al-Bukhari 5273) — this is khul. Where a husband refuses, a judge may dissolve the marriage (faskh), and the Maliki school in particular developed broad grounds including harm, neglect and absence.

From the Qur'an

From the Sunnah

Sources

Abu Dawud 2178 (disputed grading) · Ibn Rushd, Bidayat al-Mujtahid · Ibn Qudamah, al-Mughni · Sahih al-Bukhari 5273 (khul of the wife of Thabit ibn Qays)

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