Perhaps the aspect of Islam in respect of women which is most prominent
in the Western mind is that of polygamy. Firstly let’s clarify that
Islam does not impose polygamy as a universal practice. Prophet Muhammed (PBUH)
himself was a monogamist for the greater part of his married life, from the age
of twenty-five when he married Khadija (May God be pleased with her) until he
was fifty when she died.
One should therefore regard monogamy as the norm and polygamy as the
exception.
One may observe that, although it has been abused in some times and some
places, polygamy has under certain circumstances a valuable function. In some situations
it may be considered as the lesser of two evils, and in other situations it may
even be a positively beneficial arrangement.
The most obvious example of this occurs in times of war when there are
inevitably large numbers of widows and girls whose fiances and husbands have
been killed in thefighting.One has only to recall the figures of the dead in the
first and second world wars to be aware that literally millions of women and girls
lost their husbands and fiances and were left alone without any income or care
or protection for themselves or their children. If it is still maintained that
under these circumstances a man may marry only one wife, what options are left to the millions of
other women who have no hope of getting a husband? Their choice, bluntly
stated, is between a chaste and childless old maidenhood, or becoming
somebody's mistress, that is an unofficial second wife with no legal rights for
herself or for her children. Most women would not welcome either of these since
most women have always wanted and still do want the security of a legal husband
and family.
The compromise therefore is for women under these circumstances to face
the fact that if given the alternative many of them would rather share a husband
than have none at all. And there is no doubt that it is easier to share a
husband when it is an established and publicly recognised practice than when it
is carried on secretly along with attempts to deceive the first wife.
And it is no secret that polygamy of a sort is widely carried on in
Europe and America. The difference is that while the Western man has no legal
obligations to his second, third or fourth mistresses and their children, the Muslim
husband has complete legal obligations towards his second, third or fourth wife
and their children.
There may be other circumstances unrelated to war-individual circumstances,
where marriage to more than one wife may be preferable to other available
alternatives-for example where the first wife is chronically sick or disabled.
There are of course some husbands who can manage this situation, but no one
would deny its potential hazards. A second marriage in some cases could be a
solution acceptable to all three parties.
Again there are cases in which a wife is unable to have children, while
the husband very much wants them. Under Western laws a man must either accept
his wife's childlessness if he can, or if he cannot he must find a means of
divorce in order to marry again. This could be avoided in some cases if the
parties agreed on a second marriage.
There are other cases where a marriage has not been very successful and
the husband loves another woman. This situation is so familiar that it is known
as the Eternal Triangle. Under Western laws the husband cannot marry the second
woman without divorcing the first one. But the first wife may not wish to be
divorced. She may no longer love her husband, but she may still respect him and
wish to stay with him for the security of marriage, for herself and their
children. Similarly the second woman may not wish to break up the man's first
family. There are certain cases such as this where both women could accept a
polygamous marriage rather than face divorce on the one hand or an
extra-marital affair on the other.
These examples have been mentioned because to the majority of Westerners
polygamy is only thought of in the context of a harem of glamorous young girls,
not as a possible solution to some of the problems of Western society itself. Some
time has been given to it not in order to advocate its indiscriminate use, but
in an attempt to show that it is a practice not to be condemned without thinking
of its uses and possible benefits in any community.