Can Divorced Women Marry Husband Again Islam
I was 19 the offset time matrimony was mentioned. My mother told me virtually a immature man whose family unit had expressed an interest in me, and so she promptly left the firm. The realisation that I was of marriageable historic period was conspicuously equally hard for her as it was surprising to me. I was a geeky young woman who had never fifty-fifty shaken hands with a man, let solitary had a boyfriend. I'd attended an all-girls Cosmic schoolhouse earlier opting to written report science at university. My life was Malcolm Ten and Maya Angelou, X-Men and Spider-Human being; summers were spent at my nani'due south firm in Karachi, and winters trudging through Yorkshire snow. Bespectacled before it was cool, I was brusque-sighted in more ways than one, young enough to believe that expert things happened to good people.
My showtime husband was 11 years older than me. We met only once before the wedding, merely spent the year leading up to the big day talking on the telephone. I was in my last year at academy. He was a doctor – the ideal profession for a son-in-law – and the eldest of two sons, who had moved to the US from Pakistan after finishing medical schoolhouse. We married on vi September 1996, and flew to Mississippi, where we were to live in a pretty white doll'due south house of an American dwelling.
The living room had a single brownish leather sofa and a big Tv with huge free-standing speakers on either side. These speakers were my get-go husband's passion. He would take out a tape measure to check the distance betwixt them, the Idiot box and the sofa. Other than that, he was placidity, reserved. His mother, who lived with us, was non. Much of what happened during that time has faded, but a few things stay with me. The way she would brand him sit on her lap, his embarrassment at her kisses, her coming into the bedchamber while nosotros slept, her odd questions nigh whether he used soap in the shower. I spent all day at home with her. I had no money of my own, and no way of going anywhere. He would come dwelling from piece of work and the 3 of us would sit adjacent watching that enormous Television set. When it got late, his mother would say, "At present go direct to bed and don't talk." She put a red sock in with the white wash and blamed me for ruining his lab coats. She put a hair scrunchie in the pressure cooker and told me information technology was God instruction me a lesson for request her to move her hairbrush from the kitchen work surface. Was I losing my heed? Slowly I began to feel afraid for no reason; I lost weight – it seemed I had married a man and his mother.
I was in Mississippi on a three-month company visa. Clearing rules meant that if I applied for a dark-green bill of fare I would be unable to return to England for at to the lowest degree two years. The thought of that was unbearable and my mother brash me to come up habitation first. From that signal, the demise of the marriage was fast. I never got back on the plane to the U.s.a.. My showtime marriage had lasted a mere three months.
At the fourth dimension, divorce was uncommon in my culture. I was lucky to take parents who trusted my judgment and didn't care what other people had to say. And people did have a lot to say. Divorce may be perfectly allowable according to Islam (the Prophet'due south outset married woman was a divorcee), simply that didn't stop the gossip. In a society that prizes virginity, my "value" had fallen.
The easiest way for a adult female to regain her status after a divorce is to say her husband was impotent. It would have been easy to say I was all the same a virgin, merely that would accept been a lie. The truth was simple. I had been married and I was now divorced. And though I knew in that location was nothing wrong with my determination, my relatives' condolences left me feeling dirty, as if I had been the victim of a sex crime. I call up scrubbing myself in the shower until I almost bled, trying to clean away my shame.
****
My family felt that the best fashion to repair the situation was to ally me off over again, as soon every bit possible. One time I was happy, they told me, I'd forget all about the by.
I was 23 the second time I got married. My second husband was only a little older than me and was total of liveliness and excitement. He had the kind of energy that comes with youth, success and airs. I remember looking at his trainers the first fourth dimension we met, and rejoicing. My last husband had worn Hush Puppies.
"What'south stopping you saying yep?" he asked the 2d time nosotros met. He promised me that if his family interfered he would stand up for me; he promised me it would be unlike. I think dorsum to that time and wonder why I didn't say no. I tin can only say that I thought my elders knew better. I was raised as a people-pleaser; I was also raised to see the best in people, even if that meant disregarding my own instincts.
But once again, I found myself living in an extended family. Nosotros lived with his mum, dad and piffling sis, and had frequent visits from his second sister, her hubby and their two small children. There was also a third sis who lived with her extended family and who was held up by them equally someone I should aspire to exist like.
The 24-hour interval after the wedding, we visited his parents before boarding a flight for our honeymoon. On arrival I could sense something was amiss. My male parent-in-law raised an eyebrow and asked me what I was wearing. I was dressed in a ghagara, a kind of heavily gathered skirt that skims the ground. "A brim," I said. His grimace displayed his displeasure. My hubby told me after that his father had an disfavor to skirts and saw my wearing one as a personal affront. He had an aversion to many things, it would turn out.
I had decided to double-barrel my surname, but when my begetter-in-law saw my postal service, his rage knew no premises. The strife that followed was unending, and one of my sisters-in-law was called in to give me a "talk". She told me that only actors double-barrelled their names. Cowed, I gave in.
I at present understand that the psychological manipulation that followed was gaslighting: my in-laws began slowly eroding my confidence. A few months in, I was cooking all the meals and cleaning the house. It is hard to explain to someone who has never experienced emotional abuse how words tin can destroy a person. A few more than months in, my eldest sis-in-police saturday me downward for a formal talk. She said I was neglecting my duties and needed to start doing her parents' washing and ironing. I had niggling say in the matter.
My husband's role in all this was strange. I have no doubt that he loved me, that he wanted to spend fourth dimension with me. We watched Ally McBeal every Thursday in our bedchamber – the one time in the week we'd caput upstairs earlier 9pm (all other evenings were spent with his parents) – and nosotros spent weekend afternoons wandering frantically around London only to end up in Pizza Hut. Nosotros went on cute holidays and he bought me lavish gifts, every bit well equally small thoughtful trinkets. I would go so far as to say he adored me. Simply in that location was some other side to him, the side his parents would rile into a rage, and I would bear the brunt of it.
One time he left me sobbing on the bathroom floor because I wasn't wearing the wearing apparel his mother had picked out for me. Nosotros were on the style to a wedding and his parents didn't approve of the blue silk salwar kameez and pearl choker I had on. They had a discussion with him just before leaving, following which he raged and spewed venom at me. I call up dropping down the wall of the bath, unable to breathe, my foundation washing off into my hands. His sister came to get me and I had to make clean myself upwardly and go to the nuptials, where he was all of a sudden atoning and loving. Exhausted and empty, I accepted his apology.
His parents would wind him up similar a clockwork toy with great regularity. It was usually just before nosotros took a trip abroad, and I would spend the first couple of days "detoxing" him. I remember sitting past a pool in Morocco, watching helplessly as he sobbed. "They tell me I'thousand under my wife'due south thumb," he said. "But mayhap I want to be!"
Their list of niggling issues grew. I had not been raised properly, there was a dead fly on the steps I had failed to pick up, I had got my pilus cut short without asking their permission, I'd met a friend in a coffee shop.
In the winter of 2000, I visited my parents for Eid. My hubby rang and something in his tone told me all was not well. He said he wanted me to apologise to his youngest sis, the sister to whom I had given a Christian Dior compact before I left, the sister I had hugged, whom I treated as my own. Merely she needed an apology. She was upset nigh the way I had spoken to her in forepart of my cousin. I refused, telling him it was none of his business. He shouted. I refused again. Maybe information technology was because I was dwelling, safe with my parents, or perhaps I had taken all I could bear. Any it was, I was done.
And so I practical for khula, the Islamic form of divorce that is granted when a adult female wishes to exit her married man. Seated in a modest room in the mosque, my parents abreast me, and my husband and his father in front end, I asked for a divorce. "But I don't desire to give it," my married man said to the qadi. There is a misconception that Islam does not let a woman the right to divorce her husband. This lie is spread and made powerful by the halting of the pedagogy of girls and women by men, by cultural stigma, and by the mullahs who desire to maintain power. Merely a woman who tin can read the Qur'an soon learns that her subjugation and oppression is a human-made construct.
"I don't need your permission," I said coldly. It was the commencement time I had felt such resolve.
"She's correct," the qadi said. "She doesn't need your permission."
"I don't want to have anything more to do with these people," I said, looking into my father-in-police'south optics. A stunned expression spread beyond his face. He had assumed me to be weak, that a adult female who was divorced once would be oppressed and beaten into submission, that I would do anything to avoid the shame again. They had taken my kindness for weakness. But I knew what it meant to be happy, and I knew I deserved better.
****
After my 2nd divorce my begetter told my female parent: "You will never stop my daughters doing what they want again." After this, nosotros stopped pandering to the community. Outwardly, I merged my eastern and western wardrobes, mixing kurtas with jeans and shawls. Inwardly, I stopped giving a damn almost gossip. The worst had happened.
With my personal life dead, my professional life flourished. I was 27 when I landed a traineeship at my local newspaper. The paper gave me a job and sent me to journalism school. A few years later I was working for the BBC. My male parent was impossibly proud, recording every news particular I was in and boring visitors half to decease. When I moved into my own place, the mosque tongues wagged that I'd fallen out with my folks. They didn't know it was my father who had institute the cottage in Bradford, and arranged for me to see a mortgage broker. My father understood the importance of freedom.
It was a Saturday when my sister texted me to tell me Mum had given still another guy my number. "Don't shoot the messenger," her text read. Several expressionless messengers were already strewn across the paths to my house and work, but this time I put down my gun. I took a deep breath and waited.
He texted on the Sun night. He sounded normal when we talked, but he likewise wasn't the guy Mum had given my number to. It turned out he had been given my number six months earlier by one of my aunts, but soon later his father had passed away. Going for a walk 1 cold Oct solar day, he'd found the little piece of newspaper in a coat he hadn't worn since.
We gave each other the relationship résumé. "Serves me correct for putting all my eggs in one bounder," I said. He laughed loudly and unapologetically. Something clicked in my head and I relaxed. 2 weeks later he came to meet me in Leeds. We ate lunch, walked, talked. He bought me three books: The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Hamid Mohsin; What The Domestic dog Saw, by Malcolm Gladwell; and a book of love poems. I felt heard.
Over the following months, we connected talking every nighttime, boarding trains between London and Bradford. And after much hard work on his part, I somewhen agreed to marry him. Something told me if I said no, I would regret it. I had learned that, reverse to cultural expectations, good relationships are good from the start and not something you achieve through effort.
My husband isn't religious, only he proved how much he wanted to marry me by visiting the mosque every day for two weeks to go our nikah papers signed. The experience put him off futurity visits. "Saima Mir, BBC?" the imam said, on hearing who his intended was. "Are you certain you want to marry her?" And there information technology was. Despite my husband's lack of belief, the fact he had no connexion to the mosque, and his having previously married (and then divorced) someone of another sect, patriarchal culture considered him too good to marry me. My husband was furious. The imam turned a expert man off Islam.
****
More than than viii years on, I can tell you I fabricated a wise pick. I am still married to a good and kind human being. I am the mother of two immature boys, and I feel the privilege and pressure level of raising them as good Muslim men.
At some signal they will read my story. I hope by then they volition take a deep understanding of my religion. They will know that Islam gives a woman the right to cull her partner, and to get out him.
I will for ever exist the woman who left two husbands, and although writing this has been similar standing naked in a room full of mirrors, it has been cathartic: I am proud of my fight. I dared intermission gratis of patriarchy. I refused to conform. I refused to give up my faith, and Islam backed me all the way.
I am an emancipated Muslim woman. There is no contradiction in this.
This is an edited excerpt from It's Non About The Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality and Race, edited by Mariam Khan, and out now through Picador (£14.99) in the UK, and Pan MacMillan in Australia. To order a re-create for £ten.99, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846
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Can Divorced Women Marry Husband Again Islam
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/16/divorce-islam-me-woman-who-left-two-husbands
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