Her husband wants to move far away from her family, and she does not want to go

Praise be to Allah.

Basically the righteous wife should be obedient to her Lord and not disobedient to her husband. There is no better deed than a woman obeying her husband as Allaah has commanded, at the time when he is disobeying Him with regard to her.

The husband has the right to stop his wife from visiting her family – if he thinks that doing so will serve some shar’i purpose, for example, if she is rebellious towards him every time she comes back from visiting them. But if he is doing them wrong and they are not disobedient towards Allaah and they do not try to turn his wife against him, then the husband is a sinner if he cuts their daughter off from them. She also has to obey him with regard to not going out.

The husband has the right to relocate his family wherever he thinks will be good for them, and his wife does not have the right to disobey him with regard to that, unless it was made a condition in the marriage contract that he would not make her move. If this condition was not stipulated, then she has no right to object.

Good treatment of wives is a duty enjoined upon husbands by Allaah, when He said (interpretation of the meaning): “… and live with them honourably…” [al-Nisa’ 4:19]. The husband does not have the right to treat his wife badly. If he sees her doing something that goes against the sharee’ah, he should follow the steps laid down by sharee’ah to put the matter right. Firstly, he should exhort her in a good manner, and if that does not work, he should adopt the method of forsaking her (i.e., not having marital relations with her). If that does not work, then he may strike her, in a manner that does not cause pain or injury.

If the husband does treat his wife badly, that does not mean that she should disobey him or go against what Allaah has commanded her to do with regard to him.

We advise the sister to do the following:

1. 1. strive hard to do things that will please her husband such as speaking nicely and treating him well.

   2. To deal with him not on the basis that she is his opponent and his equal with regard to commanding and forbidding, but on the basis that she is obedient to him and is at his beck and call, because this will make a decent man feel shy, and will make matters easier for her and help her to convince him. But he is the one who is in charge of her (he is qawwaam over her), not the other way round.

   3. She should offer lots of du’aa’ for her husband to be reformed and for things to be made easy for her. She should put things right between herself and her Lord so that Allaah will put things right between her and other people.

   4. There is nothing wrong with asking someone whose religious commitment she trusts and who is wise to intervene between her and her husband, to convince him to change his mind about moving, if she thinks that this would have a bad effect on her religious commitment or that it would make matters between them worse. Otherwise, she should accept what Allaah has decreed for her.

1. We ask Allaah to make things easy for her and to choose for her whatever is better for her spiritual and worldly interests.

And Allaah knows best.