A Woman’s Right to Divorce in Islam – Clause 18 of Nikah Nama

I recently came to know about the Clause No. 18 of ‘Nikah nama’, it’s about woman’s right to seek divorce; I studied it and thought to share my conclusions for awareness. Thanks to Nimra Shah for the idea, she is also a great writer, she is currently writing in detail about the clauses of ‘Nikah Nama’, do follow her, I will share the link to her profile below.

A marriage is a formation of a team to lead the life with love, support, compassion and harmony; it’s a roller coaster ride with lots of ups and downs. Both husband and wife are given certain rights and responsibilities; husband is made the head of the family due to the responsibilities placed on his shoulders, but it doesn’t mean wife is any lesser; she is the Queen of the castle.

The right to divorce is given to the husband because he is the head, he takes responsibility of providing and protecting his wife. But, the wife also has the right to take ‘Khula’, but it is a lengthy and complicated process, especially in today’s time. You need to have a lawyer and go through court proceedings. So, there is a clause in ‘Nikah nama’ that allows the husband to give the power of seeking divorce, to the wife; either under any condition or unconditional. Meaning, if a wife is not happy and wants to get separated, she can simply ask the husband to divorce her and he will be obliged to do so, if he doesn’t, legal action can be taken against him. Let me give you an example:

You are working in an office, obviously you will have a manager; now, you can’t fire the manager, but the manager can fire you. But, you have the right to resign at any given time, or sometimes you have conditional right to resign. For example, if you are hired in Dubai for the first time, there might be a clause that you can’t resign for a period of three years, so you can’t resign during the first three years; but, even then you will have conditional rights; for example if company is not paying you salary properly, you will have the legal right to resign, and if your manager doesn't accept your resignation without any valid reason, you can take legal action against the company.

Apply the same example to marriage; imagine you are working in a company and you have no right to resign; if you want to resign, you have to go through courts, just imagine how torment the experience would be, especially in today’s time. So think about a woman, most of the women have never seen a police station from the inside, how agonizing experience would be for her going through all the hassle of taking a divorce through courts?

I personally think that every woman should be given this right, even if she is not asking. Things can go wrong at any time in life, so why would you want a woman to go through all the trouble? Free her with dignity.

Now that I have known about this clause, I will myself give this right to my wife, it won’t make me small, I will still be the husband, in fact, giving this right to her will prove that I am thinking of her goodwill right from the beginning.

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