Riyadh al-Saliheen and Women’s Q&A #23

This winner

was salatu salam ala Ashraful, MBA mursaleen Nabina Muhammad was in a Muhammad Ali he of those Salah was to to see all of my items that'd be my inverno and found out about them. So that was even that and many out of the line I mean

so we're back at it. Thursday night, ladies class,

talking about real solid hem gardens of the righteous by Iman. And now where we, we are in the chapter of repentance. And Hamdulillah, we finished the, in the second half of our weekly meeting, we finished the chapter on marriage, and tonight we enter the chapter on divorce.

So

how do you number 23? In the whole book, and how do you number 11 in this particular chapter is reporting to us from evidence best,

or the 11th annual who said that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam

said, if a person and an Arabic they use son of Adam to refer to any person, if a person had a valley of gold,

he would want another

he would want a second value of gold,

even though his mouth will only be filled or satisfied by dirt. And what the prophesy said, is meaning here is by the dirt of his grave.

Then the promise lies Some said that ALLAH turns towards those who turned to him in repentance.

The promise lies so

what he's talking about here is the nature of desire

and the nature of satisfaction.

Right? This hadith

has exactly the same meaning of a very short Surah At the end of the Quran, at the cattle aisle, how Kamata cattle had 1000 to one of

the default orientation or activity of human beings, if they do not submit themselves to any sort of external authority program, regime, Faith rules is that they are going to jockey with each other, they're going to jostle each other and compete with each other to accumulate more and more and more.

And that urge that desire

rather than being quenched,

when we reach what we wanted,

it will only grow. It's like a monster that we feed. It's like a muscle that we exercise. And the more we exercise, the muscle of desire and want.

The stronger it gets, the more that we want.

Until the only thing that will truly end this cycle of craving and striving. Obtaining and craving yet again

is the dirt of our graves. Meaning our death has ultimate Fabia

his mouth will only be filled by the earth the dirt of his grave

one of the things that we learned from this hadith

is having appropriate expectations for satisfaction in the dunya.

We live in a time that is unlike any other time before us.

Due to the smartphone due to television due to billboards due to advertisement marketing.

We are bombarded

with messages

that not only try to anticipate and meet

our wants

and our desires, but actually seek to actively creates within us new desires that we never had before.

Because people have fun

figured out

that desire

and the promise of satisfaction

is one of the most marketable profitable things to sell.

I always bring up razor blade commercials and these kind of shaving commercials because they're very they're so ridiculous. They make me laugh. But they're very instructive and educative as well. Every single shaving commercial,

has a guy in the mirror in his bathroom, and he shaves and then he ends with some woman who's, you know, of course, not very appropriately dressed, and she's kind of now developed some sort of interest in him romantically, because now he's used the shaving products. That's how 95% of shaving commercials go.

What are they selling you?

Are they selling you just the shaving cream? Just the aftershave? The lotion, the razors?

Or are they really trying to sell you something more than that? Are they really trying to sell you an existential satisfaction?

Okay, it is that deep.

They're basically implying

that everybody wants romantic involvement.

And if you purchase this product and use this product, it's going to secure that romantic involvement or attract it or make it

and the guy in the commercial, he's never like an average guy like you or me, he's usually you know, mashallah, like, very muscular and stuff like that, but we're never given to, we're not we're never told by the commercial that that's the reason that he's now attracting the woman it's, it's because of the, the product that he purchased. That's the subtext of the advertisement.

This is the entire marketing

field in a nutshell,

to pitch to you to dangle in front of you.

A satisfaction, a satisfaction that isn't just like, Look, you have to shave, nobody likes to shave, use our product, that's better, but to try to pitch to you the fulfillment of a deeper need a deeper craving.

A more fundamental satisfaction.

Of course, we know the plotline we know how the story ends, when we get what we want, or what we think that we want. rarely, rarely do we ever feel the level of satisfaction that's actually promised to us almost every single time, we find that the sense of satisfaction that was promised to us was exaggerated, was overstated.

And so we look for something else, we look for something else to fulfill us.

You know, I was just happened to be teaching solids, to cathode to the children tonight.

And I brought up the example of my daughter, right? My daughter, Sophia is three.

And what she loves more than anything else in the world, his stuffed animals, right, she calls them her friends.

And she has a radar wherever we go, it doesn't matter. You know, now in the stores, there's all the

Valentine's Day things you see a lot of you know stuffed animals and things like that. And there's put up in arrangements and supposed to be cute.

So we turned down an aisle in the supermarket.

And we're with my daughter, and she sees one. And she's like, I want it.

The reaction is there's no filter. There's no like politeness, like us adults have learned to do she just points it says I want it.

Yeah, I know. Due to experience, what's going to happen if I just get her everything that she points to and once maybe that toy will be in favor for a week, maybe two. But soon

they will just join the heap of other toys.

And something else will draw her attention and that will become the object of her of her ones.

This a very simple and relatable example but adults really aren't very different.

If if we don't have a sort of different practice spiritually and we'll talk about that in a second.

With us however our wants are

usually more sophisticated, right? Maybe we're thinking about moving to a certain neighborhood, maybe we're thinking about a different living quarters, maybe we're thinking about a different spouse, or a different friend or a different career.

There's a fundamental dissatisfaction that's going on.

And that's not to say that there aren't situations where your circumstances are not tolerable. They're not just and so you need to make a change. This isn't talking about that all

this is talking about the moving target, that is human desire.

We think that if we get this type of house in this type of neighborhood, we're going to be happy.

And then maybe we get that thing.

And we're not nearly as satisfied as we thought we would be. Now our attention become, you know, gets trained on something else.

What the Prophet salallahu Salam is trying to tell us in this hadith is that

rather than being quenched, rather than being satisfied, this urge this once of human beings, it's only going you're we're only feeding the fire. If we don't try to control it, if we don't try to train it, or rein it in. It's not it's all a mirage.

Wanting it and getting what we want is actually going to make us want more.

Great question, how do we discipline focus that desire

there's two things there's two ways and this brings us to the

the next reflection or the later reflections of the Hadith. So the first thing, the prophets, I said, when he said, that

satisfy satisfaction,

or being happy

is not about how much you have it is in being content a little.

The greatest wealth that somebody can have is contentment, and gratitude. Gratitude is one of the antidotes to this sort of perpetual wanting

the way that desire works, it feeds off of ingratitude.

When we have what we want, or we got the thing that we thought we wanted, so bad, and then we move on to the another thing, isn't that taking for granted?

Isn't that taking for granted that thing that we just received, and every other thing that we received before it,

were caused constantly pushing the envelope pushing the envelope.

So the first trick is to develop within ourselves, gratitude for what we have. This is the spirit of the statement of the prophesy Some don't look to those above you, but look to those below you.

And the scholars that clarify this hadith, they said, when it comes to worldly matters, you want to look at people below your status and wealth. You don't want to look at people above you. Because when you look at people above you, you're going to take for granted what you have and you're going to desire what that person above you has.

And that is a blameworthy type of desire. That's a corrosive type of desire when it comes to our spirits.

So the first step is gratitude, gratitude by spending time with the poor, spending time with people who are less fortunate or less

blessed than you are

counting and remembering your blessings and blessings and going out of your way to thank Allah for them.

The other The second technique that we have in our religion is to deliberately deprive ourselves from time to time.

Now I'm not talking about throwing away your things are going to live in the woods. I'm talking about our worship. We have worship in Islam, which is meant to disrupt

our sense of entitlement that's meant to temporarily and intentionally deprive us of things that we normally have in order to increase our gratitude for them and cut our desire for more.

Fasting is the obvious example of this

Something as basic and fundamental as food and water. When you intentionally deprive yourself of it,

you develop within yourself gratitude for those things. You train your desire.

And you're no longer desiring

the, let's say, the desserts and the fancy things and the luxuries. But now you're desiring the basics.

Only the basics will satisfy. Haven't you had that happen before I know I have, where you fasted all day. And maybe you're like, thinking about the sort of luxurious items that you want to eat when you break your fast sweets or, you know, the like.

And then you go to eat it, and it feels horrible. It's like you're recalibrating your body

to appreciate what you actually need, and not what you think you want. The body when it's done fasting, what it wants more than anything is water and simple food.

If you eat heavy food, greasy food, or you eat load up on sweets, you regret, it feels it doesn't make you feel good. But there's other acts of worship other than fasting, which is the obvious one that also do this same type of work, such as energy KEF.

Right? camping out in the masjid retreat and MSG.

You're taking yourself out of your home, which is full with your comforts. You have your whatever your alarm clock, your nice soft bed and pillow and your morning routine, and your PJs and your robe and all these sorts of things that you have comforts of home that we normally we do we take for granted.

And now you're sleeping out in the messaging, once a year, twice a year, whenever you're able to.

You've disrupted this pattern. Now you are sleeping on a harder floor now you've got maybe other people doing TKF that are bothering you, they're snoring, or they're up late talking.

Right, all these other little sort of thing, things that you know, annoyances, maybe.

And so you appreciate what you have at home when you go back home.

pilgrimage is one of these things,

both of Umrah and Hajj, the lesser pilgrimage and the major pilgrimage.

When we do we leave our homes, we sacrifice our wealth, we put our wealth, specifically in the way of Allah. We're in a foreign place, we might not speak the language, the culture is not ours, we're dependent, we're vulnerable. We could die. You're on the plane, some people are late. No, they're afraid of flying.

Or other things can happen.

You expose yourself to this sort of you change the duck sea change the the environment. And so when you return home, you're grateful. You're grateful for those things that you have day in and day out the satisfaction of being in a place or in a family that you're understood. You have people from your same culture, speak the language, these sorts of things.

And finally night prayers.

My prayers are one of the fundamental pillars of developing gratitude, depriving yourself of sleep.

The prophesy Saddam was quite explicit about this.

In one Hadith, he said that

whoever ever sleeps the entire night, without waking up for even two rakaats of night prayer. It says if the devil urinated in his ears, literally the language of the prophesy son, I'm used.

Why? Because too much sleep can make one slothful, you can make one lazy.

And it's just like food, in that the deliberate limitation of it. It's almost like you're conducting experiments with yourself

in order to develop your gratitude, occasionally depriving yourself of things

in order to keep your desire in check and to keep your gratitude at a appropriate level. Because desire this is the point. Desire is at the border of what we let ourselves consume, and partake in.

It. If we deliberately partaken deprive with this in mind, we get to set the parameters of our desire, we get to keep it in check.

If we are simply indulging in everything we want, then

that border of desire is going to keep expanding, expanding, expanding indefinitely.

The final reflection for this hadith before we move on to the fifth is

Why does Why does the prophesy is finished this hadith was something that seems unrelated a lot of turns towards whoever turns towards Him in repentance.

He's talking about gratitude or the lack there of the wanting the wanting the wanting, you're not going to be satisfied and then he says repentance, which is why it's in this chapter.

Whatever Allah does this, that's good. Yes, masha Allah desire can lead to send some of desire of his sin.

That's true.

But there's another, there's another more merciful meaning in there. And this happens in the Koran very, very, very often. When Allah subhanaw taala mentioned something that goes against our nature,

or that we are expected to fall short. From time to time. Allah almost always reminds us that He is Forgiving and Merciful.

It's different than the things that we're expected to stay away from when Allah has power to Allah. He talks about Xena, he talks about fornication and adultery, he talks about theft, burglary, murder these things.

Allah doesn't bring up this language. He says, who will have Kaitlan disease and he's wise and he's, he's, he's gonna He's

indomitable. He mentions names that inspire fear and all in us. But when there's something like this,

that he knows is going to be difficult. He knows that vast majority of us are going to struggle with this and some days we're going to succeed and some days we're going to fail.

Allah subhanaw taala almost always reminds us of His mercy, and his forgiveness. And the prophesy said on those that hear that Allah is a web and he turns in repentance to the one who after they've desired and exceeded in their desire. They recognize it and they turn back with a repentant heart

any questions thoughts, reflections on the Hadith before we move to the

divorce law?

Okay,

so we finished the tab and we finished the chapter on marriage. And as we saw towards the end of the chapter on marriage, there is

crossover between marriage and divorce, because when you can remarry is affected by how the divorce goes down. What type of divorce we're talking about. Custody is an issue that is starts with, you know, divorce. However, it's also affected by if one of the parents remarries, right, we talked about those sorts of things. So there's a bit of crossover. But we haven't really had the chance to formally talk about divorce, what it is, what are the different categories of divorce?

And we have to realize that when we're translating between Arabic and English, especially Arabic, legal terminology in English, the translations are not perfect, right. So in English, we use the word divorce.

idiomatically like in common speech to refer to many different types of separation. Within Islamic law, there's not just one type of separation.

Now, it

I think, is beneficial to take a step back and remember that there's no shame in divorce in a snap. This is one point upon which contemporary Muslim cultures have kind of made things a little bit more difficult than Islamic law itself. If you look at the Companions, they were getting married and getting divorced with ease, okay. It wasn't a stigma in the community to have gone through a divorce, and it was not a stigma to remarry or it was not considered

embarrassing or any less necessarily desirable to marry somebody who had been divorced whether they had children from previous marriages or not. This is something that

is very important because it you have to remember that the Marriage Marriage is a

institution, what's the primary reason that marriage is the way it is because marriage is the optimal circumstances in which to raise a child.

That's the long and short of it, no matter what our society tells us about love is love. And, you know, love wins. And it's all about, you know, this kind of Disney idea of romance. And, you know, you just, you know, you're walking in the store one day, and you just lock eyes with someone and it's love at first sight. Yes, we recognize romance, yes, we rock, we recognize attraction, all of these things are real. And they're good. They're not inherently bad things. But the reason that the institution of marriage exists, first and foremost, is to provide the best environment to raise children. If you subtract one parent from the situation, if you have children growing up with only

one parent, they are statistically disadvantaged in multiple ways, they are statistically more likely to get involved in crime, they're statistically likely more likely to struggle in school and to have behavioral problems and to indulge in risk behaviors. And, and and to the end of it. All right, so we can't lose sight, even though it's much maligned, even though people have completely lost sight of it in our contemporary culture of marriage is there in order to achieve the best situation for children.

Given that in mind,

keeping that in mind, a relationship can get to the point where the marriage no longer serves that goal.

Yes, relationships can become so

I hate to use an overused word, but let's say toxic, and isn't over used word today. But it gives us something important. Relationships can be so broken, and so

even endangering,

that it defeats the original purpose of marriage, that the relationship actually becomes a greater hindrance upon the education and the upbringing of the child, then, if they were to separate, and especially if they were to separate and remarry,

which is why in Islam, there should not be I should say, among Muslims, there should not be any shame in divorce.

Right? There should not be hesitancy for a woman or a man to get divorced. And to having to worry about is anybody going to want to remarry me? Am I going to have to live my life alone, all these sorts of things. And we know how expensive it is to live in a place like the United States of America. It makes matters even worse.

So divorce exists for that reason.

Right? It's permissible for us marriage is is worship and Islam but it's not like in Christianity where it is a sacrament, such that you are sort of, you know, sinful or have done something wrong. If you divorce, it is part worship and also part contract and every contract can be broken under the right circumstances.

So that's why divorce is

divorces where it's

divorce that's that explains the status of divorce within Islamic law. Now, if we look at how this kind of book that I'm going through to introduce divorce law to you is structured. It has four main parts the first part is an one off the left, which is the different types of what we call divorce or separation.

The second type is out of Canada lock right the essential elements that make a separation or divorce valid.

The third part is called a Raja. This refers to a pending divorce, or a pending separation that can be revoked.

And finally, we have a kind of miscellaneous chapter on various things that pertain to divorced women once they've been divorced.

So let's zoom in and enter our first major part the different types of separation or the different types of divorce

This section itself is also broken up into multiple sections 12345 to be exact. The first is understanding what is a final divorce from a pending divorce what is understanding the difference between the two or expressed differently the difference between a divorce which is revocable, from a divorce, which is not revocable.

The second section is understanding the Sunnah of divorce, though an orthodox method of divorce, or separation, compared to

an innovative or heterodox form of divorce or separation.

The third section is dedicated to a hola hola hola is and technically an annulment depending on the legal school that we're talking about. So this is a specific type of separation that is initiated from the woman that is kind of done with an exchange of part or all of her dowry, and we will get to rulings of that when we get there.

The next section is differentiating between divorce and annulment. And finally,

issues related to who controls or who's in the driver's seat when it comes to issues of divorce? And what extent can we give the other party options within that general context?

Okay, so now we're going to enter into that first chapter of that first section, which is understanding the difference between a revocable divorce and a non revocable divorce or perhaps we can translate it as a final divorce versus a pending divorce. As normal we deal first of all, with points of consensus between all of the scholars, and we're going to deal with various evidence from the Quran and the Sunnah, that indicate why this this thing is actually a thing. Why is there such a thing as a pending divorce, and not just a,

a final divorce,

and so on and so forth. And then we'll get into the differences of opinion on particular issues.

So there is consensus that divorce

falls into two categories. The first of them is final, or irrevocable divorce.

And the second is a pending or revocable divorce.

If you look at the wisdom

of Allah subhanaw taala, behind the phenomenon or the existence of these two categories,

each of them has wisdom to it.

pending divorce or divorce that is revocable

is

trying to limit the haste,

or mitigate the haste of human beings. How many people pronounced divorce in a moment of frustration and anger.

If every single pronouncement or expression or articulation of divorce, were simply final like that,

then it would be very, very difficult for people

because people say things when they're angry.

People say things that they don't mean people say things out of frustration. And so allows power to Allah has given us a mechanism within Islamic law

to make divorce if it's done in a certain way, and we'll talk about what that way is revocable,

meaning that every time you say divorce, it doesn't mean boom, it's done.

On the other hand, on the other hand, Allah limited within Islamic law, the amount of times or opportunities that you can issue or proclaim a revocable divorce. You can't turn it into a plaything. You can't abuse it. You can't keep a woman especially in limbo. Allah says this multiple times in the court and

don't keep them in limbo, punishing them

with this mechanism

of pending divorce, so that she's divorced for a second, but it's

pending and then you take your back and then you divorce her and now it's pending and you take her back, always kind of controlling her and punishing her, either preventing her from moving on with her life

or otherwise causing emotional turmoil. No, no, no.

There's a limit. And at some point the divorce becomes final that it becomes irrevocable. And that's to protect women from being manipulated or punished by the mechanism of revocable divorce.

The scholars have consensus upon the fact that one of the conditions or prerequisites about a revocable and pending divorce is that we're talking about someone for whom the marriage has already been consummated. It has been consummated, there has been intimacy.

Okay, there has been relations, whatever euphemism you want to use between the husband and wife. This is the type of situation where we're talking about a revocable divorce.

The scholars similarly agree that when it comes to final divorces, or we should say what can make a divorce final. And there are three things that can make a divorce final,

either because

there was never any consummation of the marriage in the first place.

Or number two, because of the number of revocable divorces that have already been done and completed,

or with some sort of something given an exchange in the example of a hula, the annulment that is issued from the woman in exchange for a return of part of her dowry.

So these are the three reasons or the three causes that can render a divorce final

and irrevocable.

The scholars similarly agree by consensus that

the number

of revocable divorces that a husband can proclaim for his wife before it becomes final is three

is three.

So if a man pronounces divorce,

and then takes her back,

and then pronounces divorce, and this is again this divorce is revocable and then takes her back.

The third time he pronounces divorce, he does not have the option to take her back.

The third time means that Nope, you're done.

You're playing around. That's the limit that the city has set.

Why does revocable divorce exists in the first place? Another point that we forgot to mention?

How many times and this is why it's tied to intimacy, like you could ask the question, he said, Wait a second Imam, you said that the revocable type of divorce is only for a situation where there has been consummation there has been intimacy.

Which means that revocable divorce doesn't exist for a situation in which that marriage has not been consummated. There's only final divorce. What's the difference?

Allah subhanaw taala wanted in history,

to give a chance to clarify whether the woman is pregnant or not.

Because how many times has a couple

gone through hardship and argued and thought about divorce and even intended divorce, even proclaimed divorce and then they find out that she's pregnant.

And that changes everything.

That changes the way that the husband looks to his wife. That changes the way that the wife looks up to her husband.

They might realize the gravity of the situation, they might want to stay together. It would have been too strict, not flexible enough.

If they weren't given time to realize that if the first pronouncement that the man made, boom, divorce is done. It's over.

And then she's divorced, and she's by herself and then she finds out she's pregnant.

That's what the city wants to avoid.

Which is why the

Which is why the pending marriage or the revocable excuse me pending divorce, or revocable divorce exists in the first place. And this is found in the Quran and the Hadith and by the consensus of scholars

Allah spouse Otto said Yeah, you had an OBE that a lot of money sir for totally cool. Hopefully I did he know Absolutely.

Right. And then he says the reason why later though I love Allah, your digital data that

Allah subhanaw taala is instructing the prophesy, Salam and the rest of the Muslims to observe if they divorce their wives to observe this waiting period, the end

in which a divorce can be revoked.

Now under the law, you have to validate it camera because Perhaps Allah will cause something to change between them, and they will stay together, especially if they find out that there's a child involved.

We also have the hadith of Abdullah bin Ahmad.

Who said that the Prophet Muhammad SAW Saddam, he went to the prophesy settlement, he announced to him

that he had divorced his wife while she was

menstruating. The prophesy centum ordered him to return her

and instructed him to say,

go back. And if you still want to divorce, pronounced divorce after she has finished her administration. And as we said, the consensus of the scholars backs up this idea that there is such a thing as a pending divorce that it's not necessarily final upon pronouncement.

And that's where we'll start today in sha Allah Tala,

does anybody have any questions?

If they are Islamically, married but never consummated, and he proclaims divorce then they're divorced.

Because the whole purpose for a revocable divorce is to determine whether the woman is pregnant or not. If there's no chance that the woman is pregnant, there's no reason for

there's no reason for that mechanism of waiting. So the divorce becomes final. And it requires it requires a new Act, a new Nikka

contract in order to get married again. That's what we mean by final. Okay.

So and we'll get into this, we'll get into this. But there's two types of finality or finality. One of them in a situation that you mentioned.

What we mean by final is that the marriage is over. If they want to get married, they require a new contract a new dowry a new all this stuff.

Right. Now, there's a certain situation where

if the husband has divorced her three times

and then it is finalized, then he cannot marry her until she has married somebody else first. We'll get into that though. But in the situation that you are, you're talking about? Yes. Such a divorce is final upon pronouncement. And

they just merely need to get a new contract a new marriage contract if they want to marry again

yeah, that maybe, you know, it's my translation, right? So I'll easily take the blame with with translation by final the amount they say back in that, but there's two types of that and there's then what's right, which is kind of like it's not final, or that and whatever, but it's just like, until

we'll get into all of that we'll get into those different types of Sharla.

Okay, anything else?

Okay, everybody, enjoy your night. And we'll see you next time Shalom salaam aleikum wa rahmatullah.