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Fatwa CenterA widow leaving her house to attend her husband's funeral in another village
Question
Assalam o Elaikum,
My father died at a hospital in Islamabad. The dead body was brought to his house in Islamabad where we performed ghusal. Then the body was taken to our ancestral place in Sialkot (several hundred kilometers from Islamabad) where he was buried in ancestral graveyard after another ghusal and funeral. All of our family (including our mother) travelled from Islamabad alongwith the body, took part in the funeral/burial, and stayed at our home in the village (my father also kept a home of his own at the village) for about two weeks as large number of relatives and acquaintances used to come now and then for Azaa' and Fateha/Dua as per social norms. Now, since we must return to our routine lives (i.e. jobs, schools etc.), we are preparing to come back to our home in Islamabad. Some people have pointed out that it is not appropriate for our mother to leave the place of funeral/burial during the period of idda'h even if it means that she is moving to another home of her own (though several hundred kilometers away) with her children. Please note my mother is a house wife.
Please guide us in this regard.
Waslam
Rafaqat Ali Chaudhary
Answer
All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad 
is His slave and Messenger.
The place of the waiting period for a wife from divorce or the death of her husband is the house of her husband where she used to live before her divorce from him or before his death, or when she learnt the news of his death. Furay’ah bint Maalik 
narrated that the Prophet told her: "Stay in your home where you heard that your husband died until the book reaches its appointed time.” She said: “So, I observed a waiting period of four months and ten days in it.” [Abu Daawood, At-Tirmithi, An-Nasaa’i, Ibn Maajah]
Therefore, your mother is obliged to observe a waiting period where her husband died, which is where she was in Islamabad. Indeed, she is disobedient by travelling to that village without a sound reason. So, she must repent to Allaah and she is obliged to go back to continue her waiting period in Islamabad. Al-Baaji 
from the Maaliki School of jurisprudence said: “A wife should not move away from the place of her waiting period without a sound reason, and if she moves away from it, the Muslim ruler should oblige her to return to her house as this (observing her waiting period in her husband’s home) is one right among the rights of her husband and the expected birth of her child [if she is pregnant], and it is one of the great rights of Allaah, so no one should waive it out.”
Allaah Knows best.
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