Understanding the struggles of Muslim women seeking and experiencing divorce is an imperative for many Muslim communities argues Afroze F Zaidi. There is an urgent need to undo the social stigma around marital breakdown and the shaming of women – attitudes that have been internalised through the impact of colonialism and which do not reflect Islamic values.
While the experience of divorce generally carries with it a great deal of struggle and stigma, it can be argued that this experience is highly gendered, particularly in the Muslim community. For Muslims, divorce does not affect men and women equally, with the burden of struggle and stigma being much higher for women than it is for men.=
I experienced this firsthand when I ended a 12-year long marriage in 2019, first separating from my ex and then seeking khulah (Islamic divorce initiated by the wife) a few months later. At the time, I began sharing my struggles on Twitter, and this prompted responses from many Muslim women from different parts of the world who shared similar experiences with me. While the act of sharing was cathartic for me, as I expressed what I had been through for the first time after over a decade of silence, it also had the unintended effect of making many other women feel seen and less alone. From their responses, several common themes emerged, most prominent among them being internal conflict, practical barriers to separation, and a lack of support from those who should have formed a support system for these women.
While stigma was a prominent and unsurprising theme, more significant was the fact that the women who reached out to me, in every instance, were genuinely conflicted about whether or not divorce was the right choice. There was a lot of guilt associated with their uncertainty, fed in no small part by negative messaging around divorce that came either from religious sermons and online content or from people in their family or community in whom they had confided. Additionally, practical barriers around housing, visa and immigration status, financial support for multiple children, or the level of literacy and even just the mental strength required for a legal battle, all contributed either to hesitation pre-divorce or real-world obstacles during or post-divorce.
Interestingly, two recent depictions on Netflix of Muslim women’s experiences of divorce have mirrored these struggles. One of them is the Egyptian limited series Faten Amal Harby from 2020, and more recently the Bollywood film Haq, both of which depict Muslim women and their legal battles for divorce in their respective countries. What’s particularly striking when watching both is the commonalities in these two representations of Muslim women’s experiences of divorce, despite the disparate settings in terms of both place and time, as both reflect the main characters’ experiences within patriarchal societies, structures, and interpretations of Islam.
Mum to two daughters, Faten Amal Harby – the protagonist in the series of the same name – decides to divorce her husband after suffering many years of physical abuse and humiliation. However, the granting of the Islamic divorce is only the start of her battle, as it triggers all manner of controlling behaviour from her husband, ultimately leaving her and her daughters homeless and destitute. When Faten tries to take her fight to court, she quickly realises that the judicial system isn’t on her side and declares in Arabic: “Al qanoon dhaalim” (the law is unjust). What follows is a public battle with Faten at its centre, calling attention to Egypt’s Personal Status Law and its detrimental impact on women.
In Haq, Shazia Bano separates from her husband following his second marriage, initially moving with her three children to her parents’ home. When her husband, a lawyer himself, reneges on an informally agreed monthly sum for child support, Shazia takes him to court. However at the very first hearing, the husband, representing himself, argues that because Muslim personal law applies to Muslims in India, and Islamic shariah law makes no provision for child maintenance following divorce but only for the maher paid to the wife at the time of marriage, Shazia’s claim is frivolous and cannot be decided within the Indian judicial system. Shazia then becomes embroiled in a legal battle that lasts over twenty years, facing alienation and ostracisation along the way, until she is finally vindicated by a ruling in her favour from India’s Supreme Court.
While set in different countries and at different points in time, there are a number of parallels that can be drawn between the two depictions. While both Faten and Shazia’s stories revolve around their legal battles in the wake of their divorce, another common theme is the inner turmoil they face as they proceed through their divorce. They repeatedly question whether they are on the right path –and this is why it helps to such an extent for Faten to have a supportive inner circle and for Shazia to have the reassurance, initially from her lawyer and later from a note left by her deceased father, affirming “You are right”. The title ‘Haq’ itself has a dual translation in both Urdu and Arabic: it means firstly the rights that Shazia went to court for, and secondly ‘truth’, being on the right path, which also happens to be amongst one of the divine names and attributes of Allah. From my conversations with women who were either divorced, separated, or considering leaving their husbands, the inner turmoil observed in both Faten and Shaza was a common theme.
In addition to the legal and social barriers faced by Muslim women – inarguably in many parts of the world – it is this turmoil that particularly deserves further discussion, exploration, and perhaps most of all, acknowledgment. One woman I spoke with who was subjected to repeated verbal humiliation, marital rape, and controlling behaviour from her husband over more than a decade was told by her brother that “The arsh [sky] of Allah shakes at the act of divorce”. The brother’s response suggests that the woman was taking the decision of divorce lightly, and Muslim women often receive a similar response when bringing up the possibility of divorce amongst their family or authority figures in the community to whom they might turn for support or guidance.
Regardless of the dramatisation in Faten Amal Harby and Haq, in reality, we are at a point where it is essential to counter the ill-conceived notion that an increasing number of Muslim women are seeking divorce because they take divorce, or the sanctity of marriage, lightly. On the contrary, out of the many Muslim women to whom I’ve spoken or whose experiences of divorce I have read about, not one has chosen divorce because it was the easy way out. These women have acknowledged that divorce is an uphill, protracted, and often lonely battle –they chose it anyway, usually because the alternative would have made survival impossible.
‘Survival’ in this context does not just mean in a physical sense. It means the survival of these women as individuals with their own identities, their own personalities, and their mental, emotional, and spiritual resilience – particularly essential to preserve if they are responsible for raising children – intact. Are family members and community leaders advising women on divorce taking this holistic notion of survival into account when advising them on the best way forward, particularly in an Islamic sense? From what I have observed, the answer overwhelmingly appears to be ‘no’. I would argue that this can only be countered and corrected through a dramatic, community-wide shift in attitudes, and there are two elements to consider in doing so.
Firstly, we need to address that counselling or any advice given to women discussing the possibility of divorce in the Muslim community appears overwhelmingly to focus on marriage preservation. This likely stems from an Islamic imperative to only seek divorce as a last resort, leading to advice that focuses on prioritising avenues of reconciliation. While there may undoubtedly be instances where reconciliation could be effective, there appear to be too many cases where a focus on marriage preservation leads to the minimising or outright dismissal of women’s concerns. Again, this goes back to a preconceived notion of women taking divorce lightly, which, in turn, may well be rooted in misogynistic ideas of women being fickle-minded, not knowing what they want, or having a tendency to be overly dramatic and exaggerate their struggles. The focus on marriage preservation has had the effect of women, at best, feeling gaslit and questioning their own perception of reality, and at worst staying in situations that might continue to cause physical or mental harm to them as well as their children. In order to counter this, one simple solution is to believe women –and, by extension, to focus not on preserving the marriage at any cost but on the best solution for the woman in her particular set of circumstances.
One important consideration to bear in mind at this point is that a woman who has come to someone with her struggles has very likely only given a partial picture of them, for which there are many possible reasons: embarrassment, memory lapses affected by trauma, or barriers to communication e.g. language, vocabulary, or oral communication skills. Those advising must consider that in most cases, the act of reaching out for help is in itself an indication of how serious the situation is, even if the struggles shared by the woman do not fully convey this. Moreover, abuse manifests itself in subtle, nuanced and complex ways, meaning it isn’t always possible to identify and often defies labelling.
But also, women may, and do, find themselves in marriages where they are fundamentally unhappy for a variety of reasons that do not include abuse (or identifiable abuse). A focus on preserving the marriage is detrimental especially when the woman is convinced that she does not wish to continue in it. It makes her doubt her own instincts, emotions, and sense of right and wrong. It makes her question whether what she feels is justified, or whether she is overreacting, or whether forgiveness is the solution to everyone’s problems. I will maintain that making a woman (or anyone, but it happens most often with women) question her instincts, her emotional responses, her commitment to her children’s wellbeing, and her spiritual strength and desire to please Allah, is a fundamentally unjust practice. And asking someone to bury how they feel now is almost always likely to lead to resentment, trauma, and possible physical and mental illness further down the line. All in all, a prescriptive focus on preserving marriages and avoiding divorce, which comes not from the couples seeking counsel themselves but from those doing the counselling, is harmful to all parties, but mostly to the women seeking divorce.
Another important consideration, which is relevant not just to those giving advice but to the Muslim community at large, is the spiritual autonomy of Muslim women. Somewhere along the way, amongst misogynistic cultural and social perceptions of the status of Muslim women, we seem to have forgotten that there is nothing in the Qur’an or Prophetic guidance to suggest that God has granted greater spiritual autonomy to men than to women. Rather, and ostensibly contrary to popular belief, women will be judged by God as individuals for their actions and decisions just as men will. Women, therefore, bear the responsibility of their own spiritual and moral decisions during this earthly life, just as men do. Crucially, acknowledging this autonomy for women includes allowing women the space and freedom to make their own decisions even if some might see those decisions as being ‘wrong’ in an Islamic context. In 2022, writing for the New Arab when the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, I had said:
”Muslim women have the God-given right and autonomy to make their own spiritual and moral decisions. And whether or not we like it, that includes a woman’s right to make mistakes. It includes her right to make choices that others may see as Islamically wrong. It includes her right to use her own judgment to arrive at a decision of her choosing – even if that decision is one that an imam, Twitter sheikh or aunty might frown upon.”
The Muslim community at large, including many Muslim women themselves, have lost sight of the truth of Muslim women’s right to autonomy. Women raised in conservative settings are made overly-reliant on the support and leadership of the patriarchs in their household. Women who attempt to break away from patriarchal control or generally choose their own path tend to be dubbed as ‘modern’ – a loaded term which is a euphemism for misguided, sometimes of loose character, and secular by default. Sadly, in recent years prominent, public-facing scholars and speakers have chosen to go down the path of shaming women (on Twitter, for instance, but even in lectures and sermons) for living life on their own terms, as they express a sense of entitlement over women’s choices. Indeed, Muslim men’s sense of entitlement over women is reflective of a wider problem of misogyny in society at large. And the shaming of women is made more problematic by the fact that the policing of ‘Islamically appropriate’ behaviour never takes place equitably across genders. Men are rarely called out for widespread patterns of controlling behaviour, anger issues, marital rape, or even a constant refusal to share domestic work and mental load in the same way that women are shamed for their choice of clothing, perfume, or makeup.
Ultimately, it can be argued that the endemic denial of Muslim women’s autonomy, combined with endemic patriarchal norms, where men’s bad behaviour is consistently overlooked or excused, are directly related to Muslim women’s struggles with divorce. While on the one hand ‘marriage preservation’ is emphasised and encouraged, often to the detriment of women’s wellbeing, on the other there is very little accountability for, from what I’ve observed, the many, many husbands who are making the lives of their wives miserable. Marriage preservation manifests as advice to women to remain patient and steadfast, with the example of Asiya, wife of the Pharaoh and adoptive mother of prophet Moses, stereotypically being offered as a role model for women to emulate. Offering Asiya as an example suggests that a woman struggling to cope in her marriage only feels that way because of spiritual weakness, rather than real, harmful behaviour and circumstances that have been created in that marriage by her husband and/ or (as is often the case) her in-laws. Because of divorce being perceived as an Islamically undesirable outcome, marriage preservation will remain a focus of Muslim community leaders and counsellors; however, it would be much more effective if it took the approach of acknowledging the harm caused by men and actively seeking accountability from them in a marriage where their partner is unhappy enough to wish for it to end.
Another, more radical shift in the marriage preservation approach could be an acceptance of the idea that just as marriage is ordained by Allah, so is divorce. Faten and Shazia are fictionalised characters based on the real experiences of Muslim women, and both, despite moments of doubt, are ultimately vindicated in their convictions and walk away – as does the viewer – with a sense that God is on their side. In the face of severe hardship and criticism, mostly from Muslims telling them they are misrepresenting Islam or acting sinfully, both Faten and Shazia are able to hold fast to their faith –and when they succeed in their respective fights for justice, it is seen as a victory granted by God. Both stories, while fictionalised, have been inspired by the real struggles of Muslim women in both Egypt and India and will likely resonate with Muslim women in many other parts of the world.
One Muslim country that defies the pattern of stigma against divorce is Mauritania, where divorced women are seen as more desirable and the high divorce rate is not a cause for concern. While it may not be realistic to expect other Muslim communities and cultures to change and accept divorce to the extent that it is accepted, or even celebrated, in Mauritania, it’s certainly possible to aim towards a middle ground. In fact, this middle ground would more accurately reflect the Muslim approach towards divorce from a few centuries ago, prior to the Christian influence which infiltrated Islamic cultures via Western colonialism and persists in the present day in the form of stigma towards divorce. In this middle ground, while marriage is important, it cannot come at the cost of the physical and mental well-being and self-respect of a woman. And it’s possible that we have begun inching towards this middle ground primarily through changes, albeit anecdotal, in the attitudes of parents whose daughters seek divorce. Shazia’s father represents one such example, as he supports his daughter and acknowledges her struggle, not demanding that she return to her husband – which would not be unusual for a father of his time – even when Shazia’s legal battle had a detrimental effect on his income, reputation, and finances.
When community leaders or counsellors push for reconciliation amongst the Muslim couples they are advising without understanding whether both parties are willing to face accountability and change their behaviour, they are doing so with a blinkered focus on marriage preservation. But surely what’s really needed is an understanding of each individual situation on a case-by-case basis and a realistic assessment of whether or not reconciliation is truly in the best interests of both parties. Accepting that divorce, too, is from Allah, and that there is no shame in the fact that Allah has ordained divorce for some, just as He has ordained marriage, would go a long way towards ending the stigma of divorce and the systemic gaslighting of women in difficult marriages who reach out for help and support.
Contrary to popular belief, as Muslims, the sole purpose of our life is not marriage –it is the pursuit of God. Our purpose in this earthly life is meant to be the pursuit of the truth that Allah represents. Through this pursuit, we are meant to be constantly engaged in a process whereby we are seeking Godliness and attempting to become more Godly. While marriage is widely seen amongst Muslims as a key step towards becoming more Godly, it may also be the case that the traumatic experiences some people go through in their marriage cause changes to their personality that have the opposite effect. Take, for instance, this hadith by Imam Jafar al-Sadiq, teacher of Imams Abu Hanifa and Malik ibn Anas, who is reported to have said:
“For the people of heaven, there are four signs: a joyful face and appearance; a gentle tongue (i.e. manner of speech); a merciful heart; and a generous hand.”
Anyone who has been through a marriage that is abusive or toxic will attest to the fact that over time, maintaining a joyful appearance and gentle tongue becomes increasingly difficult. Trauma, in particular, will grind down a person’s resilience and narrow their window of tolerance – in other words, dysregulate their nervous system – making verbal or physical outbursts a regular occurrence until that trauma is addressed and healed. In a marriage where one parent is abusive and another is traumatised, the individuals bearing the brunt of the traumatised parent’s outbursts, manifested in e.g. shouting, screaming, physical violence, and/ or exceedingly harsh punishment, will likely be the children. It would follow, therefore, that it is Godly to remove ourselves from situations where we see ourselves turning into people who can no longer show joy on their face, maintain softness in their speech, or hold kindness and mercy in their hearts, especially towards those for whose wellbeing we are responsible.
Moving forward, and hopefully even before we reach a point of all Muslims respecting women’s autonomy and accepting that divorce is also ordained by Allah, our focus as a community needs to be on building practical support systems especially for women with limited means who are seeking divorce. A great deal of literature already exists on women who stay in abusive relationships because, in addition to psychological barriers such as fear, shame, or emotional dependency, they lack the means to leave. We need to prioritise investing in community infrastructure that actively supports women in rebuilding their lives after divorce, which includes providing legal, financial, housing, and mental health support tailored to the needs of single mothers and/or divorced women who may be isolated or estranged from their families.
As Muslims, we are at a point where a fundamental shift in the conversation around divorce is needed. As the divorce rate in the community has steadily risen over the last few decades, there has been a tendency to chalk it up to younger generations having less patience or not knowing how to compromise. But the real causes of divorce require much deeper and more nuanced analysis.
One significant factor contributing to an increase in divorce could be the general rise of women’s independence – this raises the all-important question of whether marriages amongst older generations were really more resilient or whether people, and women especially, stayed in them because they had no other choice. Amongst married Muslim men, toxic masculine behaviour still prevails even in the younger generations. But because an increasing number of Muslim women are now able to work and support themselves, and also because of a potentially less popular but still significant movement decentering the role of marriage in the lives of women, divorce is seen as a better alternative to lifelong unhappiness or trauma.
Instead of simply continuing to suffer in the name of a falsely glorified patience, more and more Muslim women are recognising their right to divorce and, by extension, to their own spiritual autonomy. Meanwhile, if marriage preservation is truly a priority, a significant step would be to start with the upbringing of boys and the elimination and calling out of toxic masculine attitudes. In sum, it’s time that we brought an end to the practice of shaming and gaslighting women into staying in unhappy, toxic, or abusive marriages –because it is neither sustainable, nor Islamically appropriate.
Afroze F Zaidi is a writer, editor and independent researcher. Afroze has an established track record of writing about current affairs in a manner that challenges narratives in the mainstream media. She also regularly offers rigorous, research-based critiques of colonial/ white supremacist structures and institutions. You can find her on Twitter/X @afrozefz.