When One Spouse Becomes a Muslim: The Effect of One Spouse's Conversion on the Marriage Contract, Examined in the Light of Qur'an and Sunnah Texts, by Sheikh Abdullah ibn Yusuf Aljudai, Aya Horizons

This book deals with a question which is often thought, at first glance, to be the subject of a unanimous position of Islamic legislation: the separation caused by the conversion to Islam of one of the spouses of a non-Muslim couple. The received idea on the matter is indeed that Islam prohibits the continuation of married life between a Muslim and a non-Muslim or between a non-Muslim and a Muslim, except in the case where the wife is Jewish or Christian since it is allowed for a Muslim to marry a woman belonging to the "People of the Book" (Jews and Christians). A large number of scholars came to consider that the question did not even need to be debated, because it was according to them part of the established truths on which there was no reason to return.

While having already expressed doubts on the questions which are supposed to be unanimous without being part of the indisputable foundations of religion, and while knowing that the divergence on such a question is allowed, I did not expect the diversity of opinions that this research has brought to light.

About the Author: Sheikh Abdullah ibn Yusuf Aljudai

Sheikh A. Aljudai holds a Ph.D. in Islamic Economics and is one of the most important Muslim scholars in our contemporary world. He is a founding member of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, of which he was President. Combining a vast knowledge of Islamic sciences with a mastery of modern computer tools and technology, he was a research consultant in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia for Al-Sakhr Technologies (the origin of the first PC in Arabic) where he edited most of the early software on hadith and other Islamic sciences.