MakeMine I did see those posts, I just didn't register that they were from you, who then said 'ask for advice at the nearest mosque.'
So, you're Muslim too?? Sunni???
Did you do a nikah with him,?
Unless the OP has responded to you privately, I cannot see where she has answered that question. You say she's married Islamically but not legally, but the rest of us don't know that. we can only respond based on what the OP has said on this thread.
My response to your suggestion that she seeks advice at a mosque was based on the assumption that she was NOT Islamically married. If she was, then I don't understand why she didn't mention it from the off.
Either way her partner has not acted like a good Muslim OR a good partner/husband OR a good father by not discussing his intentions to marry a woman in Iraq with her. He's disappeared at a time when she is most in need of the support of her partner, when their first child was due. Being around for the birth of his child with a woman hw purports to love should have taken priority over EVERYTHING else, regardless of whether he is Islamically 'entitled' to take another wife or not.
It sounds as though he has been absent, flaky and avoidant throughout most of her pregnancy, oscillating between being cruel and distant and then saying he wants to support his child and be with her.
Based on that, it's no surprise I assumed they were unmarried.
Women have tonnes of rights in Islam.
But sadly not the right to keep primary custody of their children, if the father decides he wants to have primary custody himself.
No matter how much of an irresponsible, absent and all round poor excuse for a husband and father he may be, in many countries where the law is based on Islamic principles, his desire to keep 'control' of his children trump hers every time. For a whole bunch of very questionable reasons that put patriarchy, family money and family honour and yes, ISLAM ahead of the wellbeing and happiness and established family routine of the children.
Many Muslim men would gladly see their children stripped from the arms of their mother, who has been the only constant in their lives, and dumped into the care of extended family that the children may not even know, with no intention of taking an active daily role in raising the children themselves, just to exert control and power over their mother.
A man who can behave the way this man has so far, strikes me as exactly the type who might do that, just because he can.
Am glad you're the same religion so the baby can be raised Muslim also.
Is that the most important thing in all this for you? I fear that it is.