Validity of divorce uttered in the state of extreme anger
5-5-2009 | IslamWeb
Question:
alsalmualikm i been married for 11 years i am27 years i have 3 kids we live in america my husband so hard but we are a happy family we been under a lot of financial presure when my husband angru he lose his mind he is 41 years old it was so hard for me to understand him once he is much older at the beging of our marriage he used to say talak when he is angry first time he said sorry to me and he said he will never do it again next time it was a big fight he hit me and pulled my hair i was bregnant but he was so angry and said talak again at the time i was so broken i went to my family i contacted a shikh at the time to talk with my husband he warrned him not to do that again and told him you already said talak twice never say it again recently my husband have a lot of debts and presure and he been fighting with me for everything then he started acting not normal like say to me do this then fight with me if i did it then says go somewhere then get so angry if i went finally people here in america one of my friends started telling me not to stay with him and i dont deserve what he is doing to me i started not tolrating him and his anger finally our friends invited us and he told me to go with the kids after we got ready to go he started screaming at me saying bad words and i reply to him and he shoute at me go and you are talk next day he regret what heaid we want the family both of us we are willing to fix what happened , nobody know that my husband anger make him out of control and he do things he regret later he went to local imam and he told him the talak happened but who once the talak based on no real matters espesally before it was under to much anger too please help me i need my family back togther i am lonley here with three little kids we both want to be back i dont want to lose the family for unresponsible husband who is not aware of his actions please make duaa for my family we been always happy we have only up and down in our relation jzakm allah kir
Answer:
All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad, sallallaahu 'alyhi wa sallam, is His slave and Messenger.
First of all, it should be noted that the spouses should avoid problems in marital life, and if some problems do happen, they should be wise in solving them, and the husband should avoid uttering the word of divorce and making it as the first solution. He should also avoid anger because it is the key to many evils. For more on how to get rid of anger, refer to Fatwa 86681.
Furthermore, a wife should not raise her voice in front of her husband because this is being disobedient to him and this contradicts the fact that Allah made the husband the protector and maintainer of his wife; Allah Says (what means): {Men are in charge of women by [right of] what Allaah has given one over the other and what they spend [for maintenance] from their wealth.} [Quran 4:34]
As regards your husband uttering the word divorce at the beginning of the marital life, then we cannot authoritatively say anything precise about this because you did not clarify to us whether he actually initiated divorce or that it was a conditional divorce, and if it was a conditional divorce, whether or not what he conditioned divorce on had occurred. Therefore, in our view your husband should consult one of the scholars in your country or one of the trustworthy Islamic centres so that he would clarify to them what exactly happened.
With regard to anger, it does not prevent divorce from taking place if the person is conscious about what he says; for more details, please refer to Fataawa 81843 and 82330. Indeed, anger is of three kinds as clarified in Fatwa 83467:
1- The beginning of the anger when one is conscious of what he says and he is able to control himself. Here divorce does takes place according to the view of all the classical scholars 
.
2- The person is not conscious of what he says, in a way that if he was later told, “You have divorced (your wife),” he would say ‘I have no knowledge of this.’ The divorce of such a person does not take place according to all the scholars .
3- A stage where a person is conscious of what he says but due to his extreme anger, he was not able to control himself and he uttered divorce because of being influenced by this condition. The scholars have two opinions about this, but the most preponderant opinion in our view is that divorce does not take place, and this is the view of Imam Ahmad 
because the Prophet 
, said: “There is no divorce in case of Ighlaaq.” [Ahmad] [The word “Ighlaaq” means everything that prevents perception, will and consciousness.] Included in this is the anger that makes a person reach this stage.
As regards the last incident, if your husband uttered divorce while perceiving what he said, then the divorce took place, and we do not know what you meant when you said that the divorce is, ‘Based on no real matters’. You should know that once the husband utters the word divorce, then divorce takes place. Moreover, if divorce is revocable, then the husband may take back his wife without a new contract provided his wife is still in the waiting period.
Allah Knows best.