Fatwa ID: 01557

Answered by Mufti Mohammed Tosir Miah

Question:

I want ask a question please answer me only on my email soon as possible. I want to ask if husband and wife have fight and wife said to husband get out from this house and husband reply the same word to wife. And after few months wife ask husband when you said this get out from the house what was your niyat he said I did not meant it I just said it and after that wife ask him again and again and one day husband said it doesn’t matter just two time, one time is left. What that all mean we are still wife and husband .

Answer:

In the name of Allah, the most Beneficent, the most Merciful.

The words which effect divorce are of two types:
1) Clear and plain words (sareeh)
2) Ambiguous and allusive words (kinaya)
Sareeh means expressly pronouncing the word divorce or words derived from it, such as: “I divorce you” or “you are divorced” etc. Clear and plain words effect divorce whether one intends divorce by them or not. (Hidayah, V2, P359, Raddul Muhtaar, V2, P465, Fatawa Hindiyah, V1, P354)

Kinaya means using words that are not exclusively prescribed for issuing divorce, but alludes and hints to it. Kinaya words do not effect divorce unless one intends divorce by them or it is determined by the circumstance one is in. (Hidayah, V2, P373, Raddul Muhtaar, V2, P501, Fatawa Hindiyah, V1, P374)

The kinaya words effect an irrevecoable divorce when one intends divorce by them. (Hidayah, V2, P374, Raddul Muhtaar, V2, P507)

Regarding your question, when your husband said to you to “get out of the house” and his intention was not to issue you with a divorce with those words then divorce would not occur. Similarly, the words your husband said afterwards i.e. “it doesn’t matter just two times, one time is left” would not result in a divorce.

Only Allah Knows Best

Mohammed Tosir Miah

Darul Ifta Birmingham