Q. I got married when I was 19, without practically knowing that I was committed to pay my wife a very large dowry. When I discovered this after a few years, I persuaded my wife to forgo her dowry and she did, making it a condition that I do not divorce her during the following year. However, two years later I married a second wife, and then a third a few years later. My first wife has practically separated from me, and is demanding that I pay her the dowry. She also got my three daughters married without my consent. It was close relatives who acted for them in their marriages. What I would like to know is whether my daughters’ marriages are valid, and whether my wife’s demand to have her dowry is correct, considering that I fulfilled the condition she had set.
G. Abubakr
A. I am in a very difficult position with regard to a question of this sort. The reason of the difficulty is that I have no access to the other side of the story. When there is a problem between two people, each looks at it from a different angle. A mufti gives his fatwa on the basis of the question put to him. Sometime, the person putting the question intentionally or unintentionally ignores a certain point that may have a bearing on the whole question. In this case, for example, the reader asked his wife to forgo her very large dowry, and she specifies a condition that he would not divorce her.
He is saying that this condition applied for the following year. Is this true? It seems more likely that she wanted to be sure of her position, and she might have exacted a promise that she would never be divorced. What she might have had in mind is the security of her position.
The man has not divorced his wife, but he married two more women. Needless to say, his first wife was very upset and she must have felt her position to be shaky. Since she has given him several children, and was generous when she promised not to ask for her dowry, he should have returned her kindness by showing her more of his love and compassion. Instead, he married a second wife and a third, adding to his own financial burden. In this case, she felt that there was no real need that she should forgo what is hers by right.
If she genuinely gifted him her dowry, without conditions, she cannot go back on her gift, but I cannot say that this is applicable unless I hear her version of what she said and what was agreed. On the other hand, if she had made some conditions that her husband would not marry a second wife, and he did, then the dowry remains outstanding, and he has no option but to pay it.
My advice to this man is to try to make peace with his wife, showing her kindness, love and compassion. This is the proper way Islam requires in the treatment of women.
As for the marriages of his daughters, these are valid, unless there was a material breach of Islamic requirements. On the basis of what the reader says, it does not appear that there was any such breach.