Faith and Logic: Polygamy in Islam

Indeed, the Holy Qur'an is the only religion text restricting polygamy. Islam greatly reduced the permissible number, as Arabs had hundreds of wives. Furthermore, Islam never mandated polygamy. Polygamy is only allowed when certain circumstances arise, particularly relating to orphans, demonstrating Islam's primary concern with that much-neglected societal section.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Staff | Articles
Source & Credit: Rochester Muslim Examiner
By Sardar Anees Ahmad | February 10, 2010

"Polygamy." While an image of Islam often appears, what do other faiths say? Hinduism has long permitted Niyoga -- that is, allowing a woman to copulate with up to eleven men to bear a child if her husband was sterile or passed without offspring. Indian law allowed polygamy until passage of the 1954 Hindu Marriage Act. A 1975 committee reported that in India 5% of Hindu marriages were polygamous, compared with 4% of Muslim marriages. Buddhism considers marriage a secular institution, and is consequently mute regarding polygamy. Hence, Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhists commonly have a consort in addition to their spouse. Sikhism allows polygamy, as four of ten Sikh gurus were polygamists.

Hebrew Scriptures document approximately forty polygamists, particularly Abraham, Jacob, and Moses. In fact, Jewish law allowed polygamy up to the 11th century when Rabi Gurdshom Benjahuda passed a Signord. Even so, Septranic Jews practiced polygamy in Muslim countries until outlawed by Israeli chief Rabainite in 1950. Regarding the New Testament, Jesus Christ declared that he came to fulfill and not to abrogate even a jot of Jewish Law. During the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther permitted Philip I of Hesse to practice polygamy, later declaring he could not outlaw polygamy, as "it does not contradict Scripture." In fact, the Church only recently outlawed polygamy.

Indeed, the Holy Qur'an is the only religion text restricting polygamy. Islam greatly reduced the permissible number, as Arabs had hundreds of wives. Furthermore, Islam never mandated polygamy. Polygamy is only allowed when certain circumstances arise, particularly relating to orphans, demonstrating Islam's primary concern with that much-neglected societal section. Yet Islam prohibits polygamy to men who cannot fairly deal with an additional wife. Polygamy preserves morality during wartime, when the male population considerably diminishes, leaving scores of women as widows. If not re-married, promiscuity and prostitution result (as occurred after the World Wars). In 1650, the Nürnberg parliament decreed every man could marry up to ten women as many men perished during the Thirty Years' War. In such circumstances, polygamy would ultimately increase the diminished male population.

With only 13% of Muslim marriages polygamous today, the rate is far less than the number of Western extramarital affairs. How then can the West point any accusatory finger at an Islamic injunction designed to preserve chastity while preventing immorality ?

Still, one may ask why a woman cannot marry more than one husband? In fact, if the philosophy of polygamy were understood, one would prohibit polyandry. If a man marries more than one woman, children will be born from each marriage. However, a woman marrying even a billion men will be impregnated only once. The lineage of the child will be suspect, and which husband will rear the child?

Some question Prophet Muhammad's morality as a polygamist. Contrarily, Prophet Muhammad never married a woman due to any moral lapse, and in fact leveled the status of women with men. As American Justice Pierre Craibites rightly observes, "Muhammad, 1300 years ago assured to the mothers, wives, and daughters of Islam a rank and dignity not yet generally assured to women by the laws of the West." Celibate prior to his first marriage, his wives were widows, ex-slaves, divorcees, only two younger than 36, and only one a virgin. When the Muslims were weak and viciously persecuted, non-Muslims offered beautiful women to curb Islamic preaching -- offers he vehemently rejected. After his first marriage, every marriage took place between 624-629 CE, the time of all the battles in his ministry. After peacefully conquering Arabia, he never married again. Who then dare label such a man a womanizer?

As Dr. Annie Besant confirms, "Do you mean to tell me that the man who in the full flush of youthful vigour … married a woman much his senior, and remained faithful to her for six and twenty years, at fifty years of age when the passions are dying married for lust and sexual passion? Look at the women whom he married, you will find that by every one of them an alliance was made for his people, or something was gained for his followers, or the woman was in sore need of protection."

Originally Published FL Times May 2007

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