Fatwa #1476430 November 2006United States of America
Is it permissible to take my kids and leave my husband due to his bringing pornography in our home....
Question
Is it permissible to take my kids and leave my husband due to his bringing pornography in our home. This has happened before and last time I warned him that I would leave him if it happened again. And now it has happened again. I am not sure if I want to divorce him or not but I feel like if I take the kids and leave him for a week or so, he will understand the seriousness of the matter. He has no family in this country so I can't just have his family talk to him and I am too ashamed to talk to my imam about it. Also, my husband told me that women don't leave their husbands for looking at pornography. Am I over reacting? Is divorce permissible?
Answer
Pornography is Haraam. It is filthy and dirty in the extreme. Islam is a religion of shame and modesty. There is no place for pornography in Islam. The sight of such filthy and dirty pictures dirties ones heart and mind. A person who sees such pictures, thinks in that way. His mind is programmed only to think about all the evils contained in that picture. Such a person is not content with his spouse as he has seen something more attractive and appealing than his spouse. The appetite of such filth only grows and this evil habit leads to addiction. Such a person is caught up in a serious disease and he has to be stopped. He must be cured. He cannot do it him/herself. He/she knows that and needs someone to take him/her out of that filth. The individual will not confess that due to shame but it is for the partner that is living with him to understand this and take the necessary steps to remedy the situation. If ones partner has cancer, one will seek cure for that. One wont let the cancer eat up the body or else death will follow soon. The treatment of cancer, chemotherapy and radium are painful but it gives relief. Pornography is cancer to ones soul and spirituality. The situation is a responsible person, like a father is engaged in this evil. He has to be stopped. It does not only harm him. It harms the children too. If you have applied wisdom and exhausted all avenues in stopping your husband from seeing pornography, you may adopt another serious move in order to reform him and release him from the addiction. You have to do this even for the sake of your children. Consider the consequences of such pictures coming within the vision of your children. That will destroy all the morals in them you are so much trying to inculcate in them.
And Allah Ta'ala knows best
Mufti Ebrahim Desai