The Wife Remaining with Her Drunk Husband and Seeking Divorce from Him

This is a message received from the questioner (N. A. M.) from Makkah al-Mukarramah. She says in her message: I am a woman who has been married for ten years. I married a man and lived with him for four years, all of which were happiness. In the last few years, my husband has started mixing with people who walk on a bad path. He has started drinking intoxicants, may Allah keep us and you away from that, and he comes home in an abnormal state and beats me severely without any reason. I am a Muslim woman and I cannot live with a person who does something that contradicts Islam. But the problem is that I have four children from him, and the oldest is five years old, so I do not know what to do. Please advise us, may Allah reward you.
Answer: You must advise him when he is sober, and you should ask his father, if he is alive, or his grandfather, or his older brothers, or his mother, or whoever he holds in high regard among his maternal uncles and paternal uncles, to advise him and guide him to good, so that perhaps he may be guided by your efforts. If Allah guides him and he repents, then praise be to Allah. If he persists in his bad state, then you may seek divorce. You should go to the court until the divorce is obtained; because his remaining with you in this state harms you and harms your children. You are more entitled to your children as long as he is in this state. So you must do what is possible of the means of his guidance, along with his father and mother, and his older relatives whom he respects and benefits from their words and values their speech, so that perhaps Allah may guide him through them. And you, along with this, should supplicate for him in secret, in your prayer, at night, and in the last part of the night. You should supplicate for him that Allah guides him, that Allah turns him back to repentance, and that He protects him from this bad deed and from the companions of evil and their company. Perhaps Allah will respond to you and turn him back to good. Perhaps Allah, Glorified and Exalted is He, will respond to your supplication and return this man to good and uprightness. If he persists in his bad state, in consuming intoxicants, there is no harm in seeking divorce; because his remaining with you in this condition is undoubtedly harmful to you and to your children. We ask Allah for guidance for us and for him.
The presenter: May Allah reward you.