Deserting the wife between disciplining and abuse : an Islamic jurisprudential study

Abstract EN

This study deals with the topic of wife desertion, or the Islamic legal recourse of temporarily abandoning one’s wife as disciplinary action for an act of disobedience committed by the wife.

The fuqaha (Muslim jurists) elucidated the methods of desertion such as refusing to sleep in the same bed as one’s wife, eschewing of sexual relations, refusing to communicate verbally or otherwise, while also pointing out the lawful duration.

Moreover, the adoption of desertion as a means for harming the wife was addressed by the fuqaha as well, and the position of the fuqaha vis a vis the right of the wife to demand separation as a result of this reason through the courts of law, and the period that grants the wife this right, and also the type of separation resulting from the separation ordained by the judge in terms of considering it as a separation/dissolution (faskh) or divorce.