Her husband mistreats her and she thinks of suicide
Fatwa No: 170335

Question

bismillah assalaamu alaikum warahmatuhlahi wabarakatuh! i feel like im being raped when my husband sleeps with me especially after an orgasm. this feeling severely harms me. i have no formal education, live unlawfully in a foreign country and face arrest in my country for unpaid child support. my husband has not managed my affairs that he has control over and often marries other woman. i beg him for divorce and he refuses saying i have nothing which is from how he controls my affairs. i think i will kill myself since he wont divorce me so i can have release and permission to leave his house. i am wishing he would let me go. he mocks me and my feelings all the time. im so stressed i dont know what to do. the years keep passing worse then before with him. advise him please!!!!!!!!!! just because i orgasm does not mean dont divorce. i feel like the trapped starved to death cat the mean lady went to hell for because her cruelty.

Answer

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger.

If a wife is harmed by staying with her husband, then she has the right to ask for this harm to be removed off her, and if this harm is not removed, she has the right to ask for divorce. For more benefit on the cases when a wife has the right to ask for divorce, please refer to Fatwa 88408.

If there is a sound reason for her to ask for divorce, and she did so, then her husband should accept her request for divorce [and divorce her]. If he refuses, she may take her case to the Islamic judge or to an authority that deals with the personal matters of the Muslims, like Islamic Centers so that they would remove the harm off her by divorcing her from him or by getting Khul’ for her.

Nonetheless, a wife should not hasten to ask for divorce or Khul’ before balancing between the benefit of separating from her husband or staying with him because divorce is not always the best solution for her.

We would like to draw your attention to the following matters:

1-    It is the right of the wife that her husband should live with her in kindness, and it is not kindness that a husband mocks his wife or harms her with any kind of harm. For more benefit on treating the wife kindly, please refer to Fatwa 86618.

2-    It is permissible for a husband to marry more than one wife if he is able to fulfill the condition of being just between his wives. Nonetheless, the wife has the right to ask her husband to be just between her and his other wife and he is obliged to give her her right. However, she has no right to object to the right of her husband to marry more than one wife. For more benefit on polygyny, please refer to Fataawa 81469 and 88728.

3-    A Muslim woman should be patient upon the trials that she may encounter from her husband or from anyone else, as there is much good in being patient; for more benefit on the excellence of patience, please refer to Fatwa 85445. As regards suicide, it does not solve the problem; rather, it is the quickest way of losing this world and the Hereafter. For more benefit on the seriousness of committing suicide, please refer to Fataawa 107193 and 96097.

Allaah Knows best.

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