The El-Sawy Culture Wheel in Cairo recently organised a seminar on the question of polygamy in Islam. The seminar was led by Sheikh Maamoun Abdel-Azim and Mukhtar Abdullah, a professor at the Faculty of Islamic Dawa. The seminar aimed to discuss the history of multiple marriages and clarify any misconceptions regarding Islamic jurisprudence. It set out the legal basis for a man marrying more than one woman in Islam, explaining the advantages and disadvantages. “I chose to speak about this topic because there are two points of view. The first says that multiple marriages are an essential part of Islam, while the second says that they violate the rights of women,” Abdel-Azim said. For Abdullah, the question is a thorny one. He considers it is essential that a correct picture of the Islamic view be provided. “When we read about the history of multiple marriages, we find that Islam was not the first religion to allow these,” Abdullah said, adding that the prophets of other religions apparently allowed more than one wife. “The Prophet Abraham and the Prophet Jacob had more than one wife, for example, and the latter even married two sisters at the same time,” Abdullah said. “In pagan religions, such as those practiced in ancient Egypt, it seems that the pharaohs had more than one wife, something that was certainly true of Ramses II. “In the Arabian Peninsula, during the jahiliyya period before the advent of Islam, men treated women like slaves and behaved as if they were buying a product rather than asking a woman for her hand in marriage. When such men wanted to divorce their wives, they would say, ‘I let you go' instead of ‘I divorce you,' indicating that the wife was part of his property,” he said. “But this is not at all how Islam treats women, as according to the Holy Qur'an, for example in the surat al-hojrat, God does not differentiate between human beings. A man cannot be better than a woman, and those who are awarded a place in heaven are judged according to their piety, not their sex. “Islam also aimed to regulate the issue of polygamy, setting out rules and ending abuses, as it does in the surat al-nesaa, for example,” Abdullah said. According to Abdel-Azim, the legal requirements are usually glossed to mean that a Muslim man has the right to marry up to four wives provided he has the financial ability to support them, the physical ability to give them their rights as wives, and the intention to treat them equally. “If he cannot do these things, then it is better that he have only one wife,” Abdel-Azim said. “A marriage is forbidden if a man knows that he cannot give the woman he is about to marry her rights.” For Abdel-Azim, polygamy has both positive and negative sides. “The disadvantage of multiple marriages is that a man cannot in most cases be fair to all his wives, notably in terms of giving them their financial and emotional rights,” he said. “If he prefers one wife over another or loves one more than another he is being unfair, and the Prophet Mohamed warned against this as it deprived a wife of her rights. “Another disadvantage is the financial one. If a man needs an income of LE4,000 to be sure that his family has a decent life, how can he be expected to run two households? If he does so, and does not provide equally for them, he will not be seen as acting responsibly in the eyes of Islamic jurisprudence. “Islam says that the family should be fortified with obedience to God. Any breaking of the Islamic rules on the man's part, because he does not exercise his obligations towards his family, can also have a negative effect on his children who will be brought up in an atmosphere of negligence or mistrust. “This can be the case if a man has married another wife younger than their mother, for example, and left them without the care and teachings of Islam. A man is held responsible for the raising of his children on the Day of Judgment.” Abdel-Azim also identified advantages in polygamy. It can be a solution for divorcees, widows and spinsters, for example, he said. One way to think about the issue is to ask oneself whether being a second wife could be a way of avoiding the temptation to sin. Forbidding men from having more than one wife could give rise to adultery and men cheating on their wives, he said. A man could marry again instead of falling into sin. He could also divorce a first wife, marry another, and then remarry the first, while observing the conditions of Islamic jurisprudence. “In his book Liberating Woman in the Age of the Risala [the message of Islam], Abdel-Halim Abou Shouqa says that if the well-being of a household and that of the women and children is threatened by a husband marrying a second wife, then it is better that he not do so,” Abdullah concluded.
