Can a mourning widow leave her home for a hall where she receives condolences?

A Fiqhi Study

Abstract

This paper tackles the issue of whether “a mourning widow can leave her home (within her prescribed period “Iddah”) to somewhere else to meet people for condolences”.

Almuhidah or the mourning widow refers to a woman in a waing period after the death of her husband when she cannot use beautifications on her body nor wearing any necklaces during a certain period of time and in certain conditions.

The Prophet Traditions (Sunnah) clearly show the rules for the mourning widow (almuhidah) as to what she can/cannot do it during that period. For instance, it is forbidden for the recently-widowed woman to go outside her deceased husband’s house, except for some Islamically legitimate reason.

One of these legitimate reasons is the difficulty to designate a place in her house to meet people for condolences; therefore, the recently-widowed woman ought to leave for somewhere else to meet people for condolences at any time.

Therefore, it is necessary to know whether the issue mentioned above is prohibited or allowed, because Shariah law originally states that the recently-widowed woman must not go out from her deceased husband’s house. Finally, this paper concluded that the issue of recently-widowed woman going outside the house of her deceased husband is permissible based on the evidence an in line with Sharia law.