If you ask someone from any Muslim community or country, they’ll probably tell you there’s a divorce crisis among the Muslims. It’s rare that anyone connects elevated rates of divorce to abandoning jihad, but jihad supports marital health in a number of ways.

Jihad is actually a reality of life, and it is the source of security. Most of us, these days, are involved in jihad by supporting national armies or through political protection agreements where the US or other Christian nations are granted economic privileges in exchange for “protecting” Muslim countries. For governments that enter into such agreements, their “jihad” is to economically or logistically help Christians, Jews, or polytheists inside their lands, and suppress anyone inside their countries who opposes their presence or the assistance rendered to them.

Today, militaries are heavily mechanized and rely on technology, so just as in other fields of labor, men are rendered useless by technology. However, we still “struggle” (jahada) to get money to pay taxes to the governments that maintain those militaries or political arrangements, rather than actually joining expeditions. This is jihad fi sabili taghut, or jihad in the path of that which is worshiped other than Allah.

A woman can do this kind of struggle just as well as a man. The more the push for “gender equality” continues, the more men become optional, rather than essential, for women. As machines replace men, and women’s ability to own and operate machines increases, women no longer need to rely on men for protection.

Keeping a marriage together is hard work. There is a continuous cost-benefit analysis going on. What are you getting out of the marriage, and what is it costing you? If you’re not getting a lot of benefit from your marriage, the incentive to make the difficult sacrifices necessary to make things work is simply not there.

Another factor is fatigue or boredom. The mannerisms or deficiencies of a spouse may become intolerable when the couple stays together day after day, year after year. Some couples will do things separately to relieve this tension, but this leads to them growing apart. When a man goes and watches football and smokes shisha instead of sitting with his wife, he is doing something for himself rather than her. They may be a bit refreshed from having a break from each other, but as the husband and wife go in their own directions, they also grow apart.

By contrast, when a man goes on an expedition and fights for the sake of the religion and the security and honor of the society, and brings back wealth which supports the family in the process, he earns the respect of his wife because he is directly protecting and providing for her. At the same time, they have time apart to rest from the things they dislike about each other and reflect on the things that they appreciate about each other; things that are missing during the time of absence.

When the possibility of the husband dying is present, this also increases the love between the couple, because all of the petty and small things that we get angry about seem unimportant when we are faced with the reality of death. When the husband comes back alive from an expedition, the wife will experience a sense of gratitude that is much stronger than circumstances where the reality of death is less apparent.

When the husband feels loved and appreciated by the wife, he will also love her more and treat her better, as she will be a joy to be around, and so a virtuous cycle is established.

From the man’s side, one of the biggest factors destroying marriages today is contact with women other than his wife. In many cases, these are just emotional affairs with co-workers that may not turn into an outright sexual relationship, but they may still reduce the affection his wife receives and poison their relationship.

The economic factor should not be overlooked here. Even if a man is religious and marries the other woman as a second wife rather than pursuing her in an illegitimate way, he may not have the resources to treat his wives equally, and may end up being unfair with his first wife. Jihad increases the economic vitality of the society, making it more feasible to justly maintain multiple wives, and it also provides the outlet of slaves, which are less of a strain on the first wife than additional wives.

Since jihad is a means of fulfilling sexual desires, and at the same time strengthens the bond with the first wife, the man is better positioned to pursue his natural desires while doing less damage to his first marriage. Islam does not teach us to eliminate or repress our desires. Rather, it teaches us not to follow our desires, but to direct them towards beneficial purposes.

Being closer to death makes a man more aware of how temporary and insignificant the pleasures of this world are. Knowledge of this reality allows him to be patient and avoid haram interactions with women that could harm his relationship with his wife. A man of understanding will also know that haram interactions with women will decrease his iman, and he will know that success in jihad depends on iman.

It’s very odd that you can see today hundreds of lectures and seminars about how to deal with the divorce crisis, how to improve your marriage, marriage counseling, and so on and so forth, and yet, almost none of them mentions obeying the command of Allah and returning to jihad fi sabilillah.

Of course, jihad will not eliminate all divorce. But it does combat the liberal world system, which is continuously promoting the disintegration of the family in almost every imaginable way. The Muslim mujahideen are the only force in the world actually presenting a viable resistance to this project, and this is visible on the collective and individual levels.

May Allah bless the Muslim ummah and strengthen us, and make our families among those who stand behind the protection of the mujahideen striving to make Allah’s word the highest, rather than taking our protection for those who fight for the sake of the taghut. And all success is from Allah.