My husband curses and abuses me

Question: What is the legal ruling concerning seeking a divorce when proper relations become an impossibility? This is due to the following reasons:

First, my husband is ignorant and he does not recognise any rights for me. He curses me and my father and calls us Jews, Christians and Shee'ah. However, I was patient with his evil manners because of my child. But when I became ill with arthritis, I no longer had the ability to bear his behaviour. I began to hate him a great deal, to the point that I cannot stand even talking to him. I asked him for a divorce but he refused. Now I have been living with him for six years with my children and he treats me like a divorced woman or a woman who is not related to him. But he still refuses divorce. I beg for your answer to my question.

Response: If the situation is as you have just described, there is nothing wrong in seeking divorce. There is no harm also in you ransoming yourself by paying him some wealth in order for him to divorce you. This is due to his improper behaviour and wronging you by evil speech. If you think it feasible, for the sake of your children and your need for his maintenance as well as the children's, to be patient and advise him to behave properly and ask Allaah to guide him, there is great reward and a good end. We ask Allaah to guide him and make him firm in his religion.

This answer is assuming that he prays and does not curse the religion. If he does not pray or if he curses the religion, he is a disbeliever. Then it is not permissible for you to stay with him or allow him control over you. This is because cursing and ridiculing the religion is disbelief and straying. It is apostasy from Islaam according to the consensus of the scholars. This is based on Allaah's statement:

{Say: Was it Allaah, and His signs and His Messenger that you were mocking? Make no excuse! You have disbelieved after you had believed}, [Soorah at-Towbah, Aayah 65-66].

Also, abandoning the prayer is a greater form of disbelief, even if a person does not deny its obligation, according to the stronger opinion among the scholars. This is based on what has been confirmed from the Prophet (sal-Allaahu `alayhe wa sallam) in Saheeh Muslim from Jabir ibn 'Abdullaah that the Prophet (sal-Allaahu `alayhe wa sallam) said:

((Between a man and disbelief and polytheism is the abandoning of the prayer)).

Also, Imaam Ahmad and the compilers of the Sunan recorded with a Saheeh chain from Buraydah ibn al-Hasib that the Prophet (sal-Allaahu `alayhe wa sallam) said:

((The covenant between us and them is the prayer. Whoever abandons it has committed disbelief)).

There are also other evidences from the Qur.aan and Sunnah besides what we have mentioned.

Shaykh Ibn Baaz
Fataawa al-Mar.ah