ISLAM EXPLAINED By Husain Zakariyya Yawale

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

On the authority of Abdullah ibn Umar: The Prophet (pbuh) said: Of all the lawful acts, divorce is the most detestable to Allah’.

Marriage and divorce are synonymous with human existence and development. From time immemorial, man has been getting married and at the same time getting divorced. However, the latter is usually characterised by sorrow rather than happiness. Allah, the Most High has decreed the lawfulness of divorce though He detests it. In a hadith narrated by Muharib: The Prophet (pbuh) said: ‘Allah did not make anything lawful more abominable to Him than divorce’.  Another one was reported also by Abdullah ibn Umar in which the Messenger of Allah was reported to have said: ‘Of all the lawful acts the most detestable to Allah is divorce’. 

These two authentic traditions of the Messenger of Allah have gone to teach us that even though divorce could mean the best solution to some marriage problems, it is still disliked by Allah the Most High. It is an empirical fact that divorce like marriage, will continue to come about as long as we live on this earth. But what may be most abhorrent to Allah could be the causes or the manner or the persistence of divorce in our societies today, of all of them. The rate at which divorce occurs today all over the world is alarming and seriously distressing. Divorce today has become, in many part of the world, a social pandemic, as well as cultural dilemma that is defying every available solution.

However, for the purpose of illustration, I will limit the scope of my discussion to northern Nigeria. Even though the northern part of Nigeria is predominantly Muslim populated, the widespread divorce has almost reached the level of a social plague. With its spate and high level in some major cities such as Kano, Katsina, Sokoto, Zaria, Gombe, Yola and Maiduguri, just to mention few of them, one is but confused on the causes and what type of workable solutions could be effective. Nigerian newspapers are on daily basis carrying the sad news of the spate of divorce among the Muslim Hausa-Fulanis. 

Though one can get over 1001 reasons from someone who divorced his wife or her husband, the chief reasons may not be unconnected with economic or sexual dysfunction factors. I remember very well in the year 2009 there was a clamour from a Kano based NGO that organised a one million divorcees march in protest and revolt against the society; but was immediately undermined and averted by the authority of the day. Consequently, divorcees began to find unions in many states, to write home clearly the ugly state of the social curse. Unfortunately up till now neither local nor state government has correct update of statistics of divorcees and the causes of their plights, let alone prepared to deal with it.

However, problems of arbitrary divorce cannot be properly tackled unless their causes are collected and studied carefully. The objective of this is to find the root causes and thereby nib them in the buds. In northern Nigeria, a lot of people marry not because they need it, and are financially and physically fit, but in most cases they venture into it for the fun of it and or for cultural reason. And culturally men with more than one wife enjoy some respect from the locales. Some Muslim men due to stark ignorance of the provision of the Shari’ah consider marriage as a casual spree. Compounding the matter, the parents of such local women due to hard-hitting poverty, usually submit to any request from just anybody immediately as just a relief for them. This is not healthy at all as it goes to tell our collective weakness, erode our pride, an almost deficient authority, limitation of the community leaders the silence of our ulamas. The persistence of these shortcomings will eventually consume all of us entirely; may God forbid bad thing!