Polygamy: lust or love

Just like Irfan Yusuf, I was also surprised that a team from Hong Kong was playing cricket in the Asia cup, but thanks to the big fella, he reminded me that once upon a time Hong Kong used to be part of the British Empire. Good on them for being loyal to their past, just like the “sub-continenters” are.

But I was disappointed that Mr Yusuf forgot his own ancestral background while writing an article about the sacred rulings of polygamy in Islam. It surprises me that some individuals like Mr Yusuf could offend their own faith-followers in order to convince the misinformed majority. Just like the people sitting behind the desk of SBS’s Salam café who have resorted to mocking their faith just to show that Muslims are “cool”, some of our learned individuals chose to ridicule their faith instead of appropriately and rationally debating the issues.

Yusuf has done exactly what an ordinary, misinformed - or less-informed - non-Muslim would do. As Muslims Mr Yusuf and myself are obliged to say the truth whether it’s against our interests or those of our community.

The Koran instructs Muslims: "O you who believe stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even as against yourselves, or your parents or your kin, and whether it be (against) rich or poor" (4:135). "Whenever you speak, speak justly, even if a near relative is concerned" (6:152).

So instead of being apologetic for our faith, or drawing self-made interpretations of the Koranic verses, let’s argue the case in light of authoritative sources and find the real reasons behind the issue of polygamy in Islam.

First of all polygamy is a phenomenon older than Islam and can be traced back to ancient societies. Islam did not introduce the practice and there is abundant evidence that religions such as Judaism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and Christianity practiced polygamy: and it is still being practiced in some places.

In the Bible a man is permitted to marry an unlimited number of women (Exodus 21:10). According to the Bible, King David and Solomon had six and 700 wives respectively, in addition to hundreds of concubines (Samuel 5:13, Chronicles 3:1-9, 14:3, Kings 11:3).

In Islam, the ruling of polygamy begins with this verse: "If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, Two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one…” Verse 4:3.

It should be noted that Koran is the only scripture that commands its followers to marry only one wife if unable to do justice to any more. Koranic verses cannot be interpreted in isolation, but reasons, revelation, time and context should be considered while interpreting them. This verse was revealed in Medina, after Muslims’ migration from Mecca, where, apart from other wars, the battle of Uhud took place in which hundreds of Muslim men were killed. Consequently, a large number of Muslim widows and girls were left without husbands or potential husbands. Therefore, as a solution to the problem of widows, orphans and unmarried girls, the verse was revealed, which allowed men to marry more than one wife but with strict conditions.

This particular chapter of the Koran does not stop there, it goes further and says: "Ye are never able to be fair and just as between women, even if it is your ardent desire: But turn not away (from a woman) altogether, so as to leave her (as it were) hanging (in the air). If ye come to a friendly understanding, and practice self-restraint, God is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.” Verse 4:129.

The first verse warns Muslim men of possible injustice while giving them permission to marry more than one, and the second cautions them of potential failure in doing justice. At the same time it tells them that they will be only reckoned for those misdeeds they commit consciously, i.e. not treating wives equally, not for those that are not within the capacity of their control. Koran warns Muslims of the potential problems associated with marrying more than one wife, but does not prevent them from doing so for some specific reasons discussed here.

Karen Armstrong, a scholar and the author of A Biography of the Prophet says:

In seventh-century Arabia, when a man could have as many wives as he chose, to prescribe only four was a limitation, not a license to new oppression. Further, the Koran immediately follows the verses giving Muslims the right to take four wives with a qualification, which has been taken very seriously. Unless a man is confident that he can be scrupulously fair to all his wives, he must remain monogamous. Muslim law has built on this: a man must spend absolutely the same amount of time with each of his wives; besides treating each wife equally financially and legally, a man must not have the slightest preference for one but must esteem and love them all equally.

Since Muslims believe that the Koran is the final revelation from God its rulings and commandments should correspond to the needs of the times. Islam has cautiously left open the matter of multiplicity of wives as certain conditions at a particular time may make it inevitable that men may marry more than one wife.

Here are some arguments. The statistics shows that women have outnumbered male population in the world and the trend is increasingly that way. Dr Zakir Naik says:

World female population is more than male population, [for example] in the USA, women outnumber men by 7.8 million. New York alone has one million more females as compared to the number of males, and of the male population of New York one-third are gays i.e. sodomites. The USA as a whole has more than twenty-five million gays. This means that these people do not wish to marry women. Great Britain has four million more females as compared to males. Germany has five million more females ... Russia has nine million more females ... God alone knows how many million more females there are in the whole world as compared to males.

There is an exception: Mr Yusuf’s “ancestral” place, the Indian sub-continent, particularly India, where there are more males than females. Dr Naik says this is due to the high rate of female infanticide in India. “If this evil practice is stopped, then India too will have more females as compared to males.”

Apart from this, scientific research shows that female children have greater immunity than male children and are better able to fight germs and disease.

Just like in the battle of Uhud, it’s quite common that more men are killed in conflicts than women. It’s also proven that women live longer than men. The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s (UNECE) analysis for Europe and North America shows that women live ten years longer than men and compared to men there are more women aged 65 or over in the region, hence one can find more widows than widowers. The report says:

The numbers of old people in the ECE region are growing and women constitute 60 per cent of the population aged 65 and over. In many countries there are more than 150 women for every 100 men, in that age group.

In western societies polygamy is fiercely criticised, meanwhile polygamous lifestyles, where there are extramarital sexual relationships with mistresses and girlfriends, are treated as civilised practice.

For the first time in my life I heard this from a group of girls and boys at my journalism school, where they were actively seeking out the opposite sex to have sex with them, despite having long-term sexual partners. I was initially shocked, but later found out that this was, with very small exception, a common practice in western society.

The arguments in defence of polygamy are not restricted to Muslim scholars, there are well-known non-Muslim writers who corroborate the idea.

Annie Besant says in The Life and Teachings of Muhammad, Madras, 1932:

There is pretended monogamy in the West, but there is really polygamy without responsibility; the mistress is cast off when the man is weary of her, and sinks gradually to the “woman of the street”, for the first lover has no responsibility for her future and she is a hundred times worse off than the sheltered wife and mother in the polygamous home. When we see thousands of miserable women who crowd the streets of Western towns during the night, we must surely feel that it does not lie within western mouth to reproach Islam for polygamy. It is better for woman, happier for woman, more respectable for woman, to live in polygamy, united to one man only with the legitimate child in her arms, and surrounded with respect, than to be seduced, cast out in the street - perhaps with an illegitimate child outside the pale of the law -unsheltered and uncared for, to become the victim of any passerby, night after night, rendered incapable of motherhood despised by all.

Dr Havelock Ellis writes in The Psychology of Sex, 1910:

It must be said that the natural prevalence of monogamy as the normal type of sexual relationship by no means excludes variations, indeed it assumes them.

…

The most common variation, and that which must clearly possess a biological foundation, is the tendency to polygamy, which is found at all stages of culture, even in an unrecognised and more or less promiscuous shape.

…

We too often forget that our failure to recognise such variations merely means that we accord in such cases an illegitimate permission to perpetrate injustice. In those parts of the world in which polygamy is recognised as a permissible variation a man is legally held to his natural obligations towards all his sexual mates and towards the children he has, by those mates.

In no part of the world is polygamy so prevalent as in Christendom; in no part of the world is it so easy for a man to escape the obligations incurred by polygamy. We imagine that if we refuse to recognise the fact of polygamy, we may refuse to recognise any obligations incurred by polygamy. By enabling man to escape so easily, from the obligations of his polygamous relationship we encourage him, if he is unscrupulous, to enter into them; we place a premium on the immorality we loftily condemn.

Our polygamy has no legal existence. The ostrich, it was once imagined hides his head in the sand and attempts to annihilate the facts by refusing to look at them; but there is only one known animal which adopts this course of action and it is called Man.

It’s utterly hypocritical to treat homosexuality as natural, although it’s not, and maintain it as a legitimate choice of a person in a democratic society, but fail to accept a scientifically and practically proven fact of human nature that is unfavourable to what we want to believe.

Restricting every man to one wife is not practical and according to Dr Naik, if every man maries a woman, there would still be almost 50 million women left without husbands in USA, UK, Germany and Russia alone. Thus, women without men are left with two options, either marry married men or become public property.

Islam, taking into account the needs and desires of human nature, permitted strictly limited polygamy both to protect women’s and men’s honour and to respond to certain conditions at a particular time.

Therefore, before pointing a finger at Muslims and polygamy, Mr Yusuf and his atheist and Christian friends should ponder and look at their own backyard: they should cleanup the mess they have made in the name of civilisation, modernism, equality and democracy.

It should be noted that under the charter of democracy, every member of the public has the right to lobby for what they believe is their legitimate and humane right.