When news reached the Prophet ﷺ that a man had pronounced three divorces against his wife, he said, “Is the Book of Allah being toyed with while I am still among you?!” ʿUmar, for his part, would have any man who came to him after issuing a triple divorce beaten severely. And when it was reported to the Prophet ﷺ that Ibn ʿUmar had divorced his wife while she was menstruating, he became angry and ordered him to take her back.
All of this shows the obligation of observing the rules of divorce with respect to both number and timing, and of avoiding any divorce that is unlawful on either count. Many men, however, do not understand this—or simply do not care—so they find themselves in difficulty and remorse, seeking loopholes after the fact and placing the muftis under pressure. All of this results from trifling with the Book of Allah.
Some men brandish divorce as a weapon, threatening their wives with it whenever they want to force them to do or refrain from something; others turn it into an oath in their dealings and conversations with people. Such men must fear Allah and keep the word of divorce off their tongues unless there is a genuine need, and then only at the prescribed time and limited number.
The verbal formulas of divorce fall into two categories.
- Explicit expressions: words coined specifically for divorce that cannot reasonably bear any other meaning—namely the word “divorce” itself and its derivatives, whether in the past tense