What is the ruling regarding a husband who does not pray and prevents his wife from wearing the hijab?

The questioner : May Allah guide you. A woman asks: I am a married woman and the mother of children, and my husband does not pray. He prevents me from wearing the prescribed Islamic hijab and threatens to divorce me if I wear it. He wants me to accompany him and his brother to places where they drink intoxicants, and he looks at me as if I were a demon. What do you advise me to do, may Allah preserve you? Should I ask for a divorce and be the cause of the family’s disintegration, or what should I do?

The Shaykh : I say: I ask Allah to guide her husband and to return him to his religion. As for her, if her husband never prays, she is forbidden to him; she is not lawful to him, and it is obligatory for her to leave him. Why? Because if he does not pray, he is a disbeliever, and the scholars have agreed that a woman is not lawful to a disbeliever in any case. This is the text of the Qur'an; Allah the Exalted said: And the apostate disbeliever is more severe than the original disbeliever. For this reason, we allow the Jew, the Christian, and the Zoroastrian to remain on their religions. But we do not allow the apostate to remain in his apostasy; rather, we demand that he return to Islam, or else we kill him, as the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: So if this husband never prays, neither in the mosque nor at home, she is forbidden to him. It is obligatory for her to leave him by any means available, and Allah, Glorified and Exalted is He, will take care of her. For He, the Exalted, takes care of the righteous. And if a woman leaves her husband because of his apostasy, she is righteous. This matter is very serious.