Reply to Does ISLAM allow divorce? If so, under what conditions?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Muslima][quote=Anonymous][quote=Muslima][quote=Anonymous]Above is for men.  Women do not have the right of divorce automatically, although they can write it into the marriage contract.  Obviously, however, writing it in raises eyebrows so socially may be difficult to pull off.

Other than that, a woman can petition the Islamic court for a divorce for cause.  Depending on the country, this could be extremely hard to obtain, even with more dire reasons like the husband is imprisoned or is a drug addict.  Taking a second wife would not be cause for divorce as Muslim men are permitted more than one wife. [/quote]

False again! Both men and women have the right to get a divorce for any reason and yes you can get a divorce if your husband gets a 2nd wife,  you can get a divorce if you hate his guts , you can get a divorce just because you don't like him,  really you can get a divorce for almost anything. The only difference between a husband and wife is 
1., A husband has the right to divorce his wife at any time by just saying I divorce you and having the intention to divorce her.
2. A wife needs to ask for her husband to divorce her, ie she can't just say I divorce you and sever the marriage. She had to ask him and he has to agree to divorce her. If he doesn't agree, she can go to any imam and ask for a divorce, at which point the imam will grant a divorce whether the husband wants it or not.  [/quote]

True--forgot the step where she can ask her husband to divorce her because in practice this is often not readily agreed to.  There are plenty of cases where the religious authorities will not grant the woman her request to divorce where her husband disagrees but rather encourage her to try reconciliation instead.

As I said, this depends on the country--imams in Lebanon would more likely grant the request than those in Afghanistan.  But it is not a walk in the park in the U.S.  even.  As this article shows, women often go "imam shopping" for years to find one that will grant her a divorce, even in relatively straightforward cases of physical abuse.

http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/news/id_7475

Also, in cases of divorce women are almost always denied custody of their children if they are over a certain age.[/quote]

The Op asked what Islam said about divorce  and that's what I responded to.  The fact that some imams don't follow this has nothing to do with Islam. Just like in the US, you will find Christian, Jewish, atheists, ect women who have to fight for years to get a divorce. Every case is different and the complexities of divorce or each case can't be summed up here. There is nothing in  the text of the Quran or hadiths that makegetting a divorce difficult, not for the woman or the man, really it shouldn't be that difficult.  Citing examples about women who couldn't get a divorce for x, y reason doesn't change this either and saying it's hard  to find an imam to grant a divorce to a woman is really false. I know a multitude of women who got divorced here in the US and in Muslim countries and I have yet had to meet one who had any issues of getting a divorce or an imam who refused to grant her a divorce, not a single one.  In fact I am one of those women. I got divorced at my request and it took 5 minutes if that much , really lol.

As far as children custody,  saying some women are denied custody after a certain age is not correct. There are clear custody rules as well and all the 4 schools of though of  Islam have different custody rulings.  But for all of them,  when the kids are young,  they stay with the mother. If she remarries, the father gets custody. In practice though , this is rarely followed,  all women that I know still had custody of their kids even after remarriage, men usually never go back to court just for custody,  not saying some don't,  but most do not. [/quote]

True,if the children are young, the mother gets custody, with the husband having the right to custody once they are older.  Age does depend upon the school.  But if the children are over this age, custody almost always goes to the father.  If the mother had custody first, he may or may not petition for custody when the children come of age depending on his changed circumstances.

Obviously, if this is happening in the US, custody will be determined based on US civil law.[/quote]

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