Q166 :Repeated divorce
A166 : The Muslim is allowed three chances, that is
to say, three pronouncements or acts of divorce on three different
occasions, provided that each divorce is pronounced during the time
when the wife is in the period of purity and he has had no intercourse
with her. A husband may divorce his wife once and let the iddah pass.
During the period of iddah, the two have the options of being
reconciled without the necessity of remarriage. If, however, this
waiting period expires without reconciliation, they are now fully
divorced. Each of them is free to marry someone else or to remarry each
other; should they want to remarry each other, a new marriage contract
is required. If after the first divorce the husband is reconciled with
his wife but later the hostility and conflict begin all over again, all
efforts at reconciliation and arbitration resulting in failure, he may
divorce her a second time in the same manner as described above. In
this case, too, he can return to her during the iddah without
remarriage, or after the iddah has expired through a new marriage
contract. But it may happen that although he is reconciled with his
wife again after the second divorce, he may later divorce her for the
third time. This will then be a clear proof that the hostility between
the two of them runs very deep and that they are incapable of living
together. If this third divorce takes place, it is not possible for the
husband to return to his wife during her iddah nor may he remarry her
after the iddah unless she has been married to another man, to live
with him as a permanent and true wife, and he then subsequently
divorces her. It is, however, totally prohibited for the other man to
marry and divorce her simply in order to make her halal for her first
husband. Those Muslims who utter three divorce pronouncements at one
time or in one statement are rebels against Allah’s law and are
deviating from the straight path of Islam. Once the Prophet was
informed about a man who had pronounced three divorces at one time. He
got up in anger, saying, “Is sport being made of the Book of Allah
while I am (yet) among you?” As a result, a man stood up and said, “O
Messenger of Allah, shall I not kill him?”
Our Dialogue ( Source : Arab News – Jeddah )