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He married her in order to forget his ex-fiancée; and the ruling on correspondence between the sexes

16-04-2003

Question 22101

My husband came home from work and told me he did not want to be married any more because he wants to be alone and than we went to Jumah. That Tue. After having intercourse he told me his ex fiancé found him by e-mail, a week prior. He allowed me to see the e-mail she sent him. To my surprise there was more than 1. They were e-mailing each other but he did not tell me that. In the e-mails they were discussing each other’s body parts. He was calling her everyday that he had to work & said he will not loose her again. He said he married me for two reasons. He didn’t want anyone else to have me & thinking it would get her out of his system but it did not and he has been looking for her since and now they have found each other. He has giving the girl our mailing address as well and she has used it. I spoke with her asking if she would not bother with him. She told me he is a free man. I know he is allowed up to 4 wives. He has his name on a list with the high school graduated from so that other people can get in touch with him. So far 3 females has found him. I would like to know if it is okay for my husband to have female friends and they are all non-Muslims. Please help me. Sometimes I feel he doesn’t want me for the right reasons. We are overseas and she is in the states & now he wants to go back.

Answer

Praise be to Allah.

Allaah has made marriage one of His signs, and has created love and compassion between the spouses, and He has made each spouse a garment for the other. The basic principle regarding marriage is that it should be lasting: it is not permissible for either spouse to go against the purpose of marriage. Your husband should have feared Allaah and had a good intention before embarking on marriage. So long as he married you with your consent and all the conditions of marriage were fulfilled, then your marriage is valid and there is no doubt about it. 

It is also haraam for him to establish relationships with women who are “strangers” to him [i.e., non-mahrams] and to correspond with them, so how about if that correspondence also involves obscene words such as words of love and romance? See the answer to question no, 23349

With regard to yourself, why don’t you speak frankly with your husband and advise him? That may bring him back to his senses. Or you could ask some good people to intervene and advise him. 

If he cannot forget her, then it is permissible for him, according to Islam, to marry her if she is a kitaabi [one of the People of the Book, i.e., a Jew or a Christian], subject to the condition that he repents from having had haraam relationships and he comes back to being chaste. 

In that way he will protect himself from falling into haraam actions. Allaah permits Muslim men to marry chaste women from among the People of the Book (Jews and Christians). 

You have to be patient and not hasten to separate from him. Perhaps if you stay with him and are patient with him, and keep on advising him, that may be the cause of his being guided and coming back to his senses.  

If he insists on separating and continuing to do haraam things, then you should not feel bad about it and should not be keen to stay with him. Whatever the case, we ask Allaah to guide us and you and him and give us strength. 

And Allaah knows best.

Kind Treatment of Spouses Relationships between the two genders
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