A Lion and Four Cats...

Time: Fifteen years ago.

Place: My class in the Islamic school that I attended.

I am in my school uniform, sitting in my desk, listening to the teacher of Islamic studies while I, as usual, am putting my textbook aside and using my pencil to draw on the white space in front of me. The teacher is explaining the reasons for polygamy: "So if a man finds out that his wife is unfertile and cannot have children, or that she is sick with a desease that there is no hope to survive, or if the man's sexual drive could not be satisfied by only one man, then Allah subhanahu wa taala allowed him to marry a second, third or fourth wife". My hand is moving around the white desk in front of me and is actively drawing a sketch of Fido Dido, and while my eyes are watching the sketch coming to life, my ears and mind are listening carefully and processing actively what is being said in the class. A student asks for permission to speak, and asks: "Maam, what if the man is the infertile one, or the one that has a desease, or the one who cannot fulfil the wife's sexual desires?" I hear the teacher saying: "Then the wife should be patient and practice 'Sabr'"... my head is still down, my eyes are still fixed on my sketch, but for a split second my hand is frozen, and my mind experiences a momentarily revolution that my reason suppresses at once, and I continue drawing, while thinking only of our school friend from another class whose father has married another woman other than her mother -although his oldest son is a university student- and left his first wife a wreck, and all of his children devastated, and silenced them all -he is a sheikh by the way- with one sentence: "It is allowed in Islam and you cannot object on Allah's well"...

Fast forward for five years... my cousin -who is not religiously committed- is visiting my parents' house in Eid. He did not pursue good education. He usually criticizes us alot for being "so religiously strict". In that session, he makes a comment that being religiously committed can be of some benifit, and in an extremely misplaced joke he comments: "I can become a sheikh and grow a beard and marry any four women I desire. A friend of mine is saying that in Islam the rule is to marry four women, and the exception is the less" and then he laughs coarsely. I stare at him aggressively and do not comment.

Another flash back... I am at university, in my faculty's beautiful courtyard, sitting on a bench with my cute Syrian hijabi friend, eating sandwiches and throwing bread crumbs to the friendly birds of the university. My friend, who is a wholeheartedly committed Muslim, tells me that she heard a sheikh saying that the original case in Islam is for a man to have four wives. Any less is an exception. She smiles bitterly and tells me that if this is real Islam she is ready to accept it. But for her, genuinely, she finds it very difficult to share a husband with other women.

And this issue remained a sore spot in my heart. Islam allows polygamy. Which is something that my feminine pride does not accept easily. And in the background of my head the thought remains: my faith is not complete because if it was the Allah's rules will be of a higher degree to me than my pride.

But at a certain point I had to beat that cognitive contradiction and reach a result: either convince myself with polygamy, or reach a true understanding of its status in Islam. I had to reason my way out of this cognitive trap.

I put aside all of I heard from sheiks, and decided to refer to the original source: the Holy Quraan.

Polygamy is mentioned in Surah Al Nisaa, in Aya (3):

"And if ye fear that ye will not deal fairly by the orphans, marry of the women, who seem good to you, two or three or four; and if ye fear that ye cannot do justice (to so many) then one (only) or (the captives) that your right hands possess. Thus it is more likely that ye will not do injustice"

So the mentioning of polygamy came under an initial condition or, let's say, was brought up because of another issue: the marriage between an orphan and her legal guardian. That was the main issue of the context.

The previous Aya reads:

"Give unto orphans their wealth. Exchange not the good for the bad (in your management thereof) nor absorb their wealth into your own wealth. Lo! that would be a great sin"

So Allah, in this Aya, is guiding Muslims to be just with orphans, and is preventing any one from causing any financial harm for orphans due to their inability to manage their own properties, hence the need of a guardian that takes care of their financial matters.

He continues in the following Aya. The context under question here is: if an orphan girl was under the care of a male guardian who is not a mahrem, and he likes her beauty and her wealth, so he decides to marry her. In a similar case, there are alot of tempting reason to do injustice: first, as her guardian, he is the one that should be counseled regarding her marriage to any suitor. So if the guardian wants to marry her, he will be the subject and the judge. Which is an obvious enough of a fallacy. Second, as her guardian and husband, it can be tempting for him to share his money with her and join them as one capital. This way boundaries blurr away, and prophets from her money and his money will be mixed. So he might be consuming part of her money knowingly or unknowingly. Third, as a guardian, he should be in charge of her financial decisions that should be taken for her own interest. If she became his wife, his financial judgements may become biased, and what might appear as a financial decision for her best interest taken by her guardian could be -in fact- a judgement made for his own benefit. For these reasons, a guardian should fear not being just to the orphan under his patronage. For the possibility of the conflict of interests. That's why Allah is asking men that if they fear that injustice -which will most likely happen since we are imperfect beings- they should refrain from marrying these orphan girls, because marrying two, or three, or four women in Islam allowed. It is as if Allah is telling them that there are many women other than this orphan so leave her alone!

BUT! Although the subject matter is not the darling men's green light to go and stack wives, Allah subhanahu wa taala did not allow this to pass, and right with the mentioning of polygamy, Allah has put the condition VERY clear: "and if ye fear that ye cannot do justice (to so many) then one (only) or (the captives) that your right hands possess. Thus it is more likely that ye will not do injustice"

So, dear men, if you believe that you are not going to be just with your "other" wives, please restrict yourselves to one wife (or a woman slave or jariyah, which does not exist now, and that itself is a subject the needs a whole different post!).

BUT! In Aya 129 of the same surah, Allah subhaanahu wa taala says:

"Ye will not be able to deal equally between (your) wives, however much ye wish (to do so). But turn not altogether away (from one), leaving her as in suspense. If ye do good and keep from evil, lo! Allah is ever Forgiving, Merciful"

Alot of sheikhs and ulamaa has explained this as a different kind of justice. So in the first Aya (Aya 3), the justice mentioned is justice in practicalities, like finance, residence, good treatment, spending nights with... etc. But the justice mentioned in the second Aya (Aya 29) is emotional justice. So the justice that men cannot practice is not the same justice that is a condition for polygamy. Under this explanation, men can marry more than one woman as long as they give them the same of everything except emotions.

As an educated women with some humble amount of intelligence, I would question this. I will be insulting my brain if I accept it without making the fallacies that I see in this logic clear.

Can some one try and be keen to treat his wives emotionally equal? Is this something that the "wives" can see and claim equal or not equal? Would any one do an effort to give same amounts of emotions to people? Are emotions even quantized so that one can try to give equal emotions? And if Allah subhanahu wa taala meant that it is justice in emotions that could not be achieved, then why does he continue in the Aya and ask men not to leave women suspended because of that injustice? If the Aya meant emotional injustice alone then why would he refer to a woman completely neglected as the extreme form of this injustice?

My understanding here is that, and I am making it clear that these are my own inquirings, not a knowledge that I am establishing, just so that no one would come here and accuse me of publishing Islamic knowledge that is insufficient to represent Islam!, so I was saying, my understanding is that Allah subhaanahu wa taala knows us better than we know ourselves. So although he made it CRYSTAL CLEAR that polygamy is allowed under the condition of justice, he knows that most men will not resist that temptation and will re-marry a second, a third and a fourth wife without paying so much attention to the issue of justice, he is asking those men to, at least, not turn away completely from one wife and leave her just like that, suspended in the air.

Now having you deduced what you deduced from the above reflections on Aya 3 and Aya 129 of Surah Al Nisaa, read along what happened with Fatima, the daughter of the prophet, salla Allah aleih wa sallam: 

"I heard Allah's Apostle who was on the pulpit, saying, 'Banu Hisham bin Al-Mughira have requested me to allow them to marry their daughter to Ali bin Abu Talib, but I don't give permission, and will not give permission unless 'Ali bin Abi Talib divorces my daughter in order to marry their daughter, because Fatima is a part of my body, and I hate what she hates to see, and what hurts her, hurts me.'" [Saheeh al-Bukhaari, Vol. 7, Book 62 (Book of Marriage), Hadeeth No. 4887]  
  
So when sayedna Ali radi Allah anhu wanted to re-marry while he was still married to Fatima, Fatima was angry and sad, and she complained to her father, the beloved prophet salla Allah aleih wa sallam. And the prophet, in turn, blamed Ali for this, and he said that (what hurts Fatima hurts him). So the prophet salla Allah aleih wa sallam acknowledged a woman's right to feel hurt if her husband marries another wife! And when this woman was his daughter, he prevented that polygamy to happen! If polygamy was an absolute right of the man given to him by Allah, would the prophet object on it or hinder a man from practicing this right?

Now some sheikhs explain that the attitude of the prophet was not because of the second marriage, but because of who the bride was. If this was the case, then why did Ali refrain from marrying any other woman beside Fatima until her death, and then after she died, he married several times?

Ok.

Now my last argument is all about logic.

In any community, the ratio of men to women is ALMOST 1:1. Usually, the women are slightly more in numbers. And this is usually listed as a justification for polygamy. 

HOWEVER! Think with me: if polygamy was an absolute right of men: that is, every man can marry any number of women -up to four-, think what will happen if every man married two women: almost one half of the male population will remain without wives! If a SECOND MARRIAGE was considered a necessity to satisfy the unstoppable sexual drive of men, then what will happen to that sexual drive of half of the male population if they were left WITHOUT ANY WIFE?  

Just think! And let's keep our conclusions to ourselves until one scholar can impartially answer our inquiries!