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Does a divorce take effect if I swore to it twice before consummating my marriage with my wife?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

Swearing by divorce is forbidden in Islamic law. The majority of scholars hold the view that if one breaks such an oath, the divorce takes effect, whether the intention was actual divorce, threat, or emphasis. This is the relied-upon fatwa. Some scholars, like Ibn Taymiyyah, are of the opinion that if the intention was not divorce, but rather a threat or emphasis, then the one who swore must pay an expiation for a broken oath (kaffarat yamin), and no divorce occurs.

If you swore by divorce and then broke that oath, your wife has been divorced. Since you had not consummated the marriage with her, she is irrevocably separated from you (baa'in) by this divorce. You cannot take her back except through a new marriage contract.

However, if the oath of divorce was uttered unintentionally, such as a slip of the tongue or spoken in a state of absent-mindedness, then divorce does not occur in such a case.

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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