The following had been extracted by Ahmed Fazel Ebrahim from (internet Article) Muslim Marriage Contract in American Courts by Azizah Y. al-Hibri, T. C. Williams School of Law, University of Richmond, <aalhibri@richmond.edu> , Minaret of Freedom Banquet, May 20, 2000.

(khul`, which does not involve ’ismah, but involves giving up the woman’s mahr and, some argue, obtaining the consent of the husband. [i]

In the khul` form of divorce, the wife tells the husband "I want to leave you; take your mahr and go." Traditionally this has been interpreted to mean that the wife must first get the husband's consent to khul`, which is not really in the prophetic tradition. In that tradition, the Prophet said to a woman who had received a garden as her mahr, "Are you willing to return the garden?" She said: “yes,” and they were pronounced divorced. Yet many Muslim countries require the consent of the husband, and that has led to husbands blackmailing their rich wives. In some cases, the husband demanded not only the return of his mahr, but also an additional bonus of hundreds of thousands of dollars. For this reason, women who cannot obtain khul` for lack of spousal consent, end up asking for judicial divorce. So, what kind of a right is this khul`? It is almost useless!

That is why in the 1960s a court in Pakistan revisited the issue and concluded from the Qur’an and the prophetic tradition that the consent of the husband is necessary in the case of khul`. Under this view, you have a khul` when the woman says "Here's your mahr and goodbye." Nobody picked up on this Pakistani opinion although it was excellent jurisprudentially. But, in January of this year, al-Azhar in cooperation with the Egyptian government changed the law of khul` so that the consent of the husband was no longer required. Some journalists protested that the change spelled the end of Islamic law in Egypt; but the change in the law was passed and now Egypt follows the prophetic tradition of granting khul`without the consent of the husband. Although it is too early to say, there are other countries getting ready to follow suite.)