ISLAM THE BASICS

POLYGAMY IN ISLAM
 
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Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Biography Of The Prophet
 
 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 Quran 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. It has been widely agreed in the Islamic
 world that mere human beings cannot fulfill this Quranic
 requirement: it is impossible to show such impartiality and as a
 result Muhammad's qualification, which he need not have made,
 means no Muslim should really have more than one wife. In
 countries where polygamy has been forbidden, the authorities have
 justified this innovation not on secular but on religious grounds.
 -- p. 191
 
Sir Abdullah Suhrawardy, The Sayings of Muhammad
 
 With regard to polygamy, Muhammad did not introduce this practice,
 as has so often been wrongly alleged. The Scriptures and the other
 sacred books bear abundant proof of the fact that is was
 recognized as lawful and, indeed, widely practised by patriarchal
 prophets, Zoroastrians, Hindus and Jews. In Arabia and all the
 surrounding countries a system of temporary marriages, marriages
 of convenience, and unrestricted concubinage was also prevalent:
 this, together with polygamy, had most disastrous effects on the
 entire moral and social structure, which Muhammad remedied.
 
 Muhammad married Khadija at the age of 25, and he took no other
 wife during the twenty-six years of their married life. He married
 Aisha . . . at the age of 54, three years after the death of
 Khadija. After this marriage, he took other wives, about whom
 non-Muslim writers have directed much unjust criticism against
 him. The facts are all these ladies were old maids or widows left
 destitute and without protection during the repeated wars of
 persecution, and as head of the State at Medina the only proper
 way, according to the Arab code, in which Muhammad could extend
 both protection and maintenance to them was by marriage. The only
 young person was Maria the Copt, who was presented to him as a
 captive of war, and whom he immediately liberated, but she refused
 to leave his kind protection and he therefore married her.
 
 . . . 'Ye may marry of the women who seem good to you two or three
 or four, but if ye fear that ye cannot observe equity between
 them, then espouse but a single wife' (iv.3) . . . the growing
 majority of Muslims interpret the above verse as a clear direction
 towards monogamy . . . -- p. 41-43
 
Sherif Abdel Azeem, Women In Islam Versus Women In 
The Judaeo-Christian Tradition
 
 Why are there four female converts for every male convert in the
 US? This paper provides clues by examining the teachings of the
 three monotheistic faiths with respect to women.