If we could go past the debate of whether three divorces given in one instance are to be considered one or three, maybe we can focus a bit on the trauma that a woman goes through when her husband tortures her with the pronouncement of the word divorce. I am saying tortured because the intention of the man here is not to make a decision and nor to give a warning, but to play with the emotions of the woman and bring her to subjugation. There are Muslim men here who pronounce the divorce word day and night but do not let go of the wife saying they did not mean it or they were just threatening. Is that considerable?
Consider
in the light of the following Hadith,
‘There
are three issues that the reality of them is a reality and joking about them is
also a reality; marriage, divorce and revoking divorce.’
Then there are those spectators of divorce who are busy in keeping count of the divorce rather than addressing the issue at hand. The point is that divorce by the man is supposed to be a process by which a man can make his wife understand that things have become unbearable for him, and if things are not rectified, he can exit the marriage by giving a suitable absorption time. When he gives the first divorce, it is warning count one. If the issue is not resolved within three months, the divorce matures and executes itself. Both partners are free to marry elsewhere or even remarry each other. Should the first divorce be reconciled by the man within three months, the marriage continues. Should things continue to be unbearable, the second divorce would serve as warning count two. The divorce may mature or revoke as said afore within a period of three months. God forbid, should the dilemma happen a third time, its warning count three, over and out with immediate effect. No more three months chance period together. The man and woman cannot stay together a dime further.
Few of our men know this gradual process of warnings and then the final divorce. It is a method meant to get across a message meaningfully rather than show fist power and give emotional shocks. Yet our men use the divorce word to control their domestic life by a shock-and-control method.
By Islam, three divorces cannot be given all together. A man did so during Prophet Muhammed SAW’s time and Prophet’s face turned red with anger saying,
‘Have
people started playing with religion while I am still around?’
However, men continued tempering with the legal divorce process. So Syedna Umar RA used his juristic ruling right of Ijtehad and pronounced the triple divorce effective in implementation, to punish the men who were playing with the fire word divorce. In effect, they got what they gave out, lost their wife who they were trying to terrorize and got the additional punishment of fifty lashes.
Today, the instant triple divorce has become rampant in the society, with the original correct and effective method of divorce unknown to the majority. In jurisprudence, the instant triple divorce is called Talaq-e-Bidah, that is, the innovated divorce. It is a sin, but no one realizes the sin of it anymore, neither it serves as a punishment for the men in our male dominated society anymore, nor do the guilty men get the punishment of fifty lashes anymore.
The Pakistan Family Court needs to rectify two things. If a man files for divorce, the divorce should mature after three months and it should be one divorce only. Currently, the court itself automatically issues the second and third divorce, a month apart each, unfortunately closing the doors of any possible future reconciliation. Secondly, the court should re-implement the punishment of fifty lashes Syedna Umar RA meted out to men who pronounced the triple divorce. It should be meted out to those men too who keep pronouncing the divorce word day and night and then back out. It is the digital age. The women can record the multiple divorce shouts by the husband on their mobiles and empower themselves against the divorce terrorism.
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