I have yet to meet a muslim man with more than one wife let alone four..Such a lack of understanding of true islamic principles and provisions (and the use of them).
Islamic laws explicitly allow multiple wives and I know people who have multiple wives. Here in India the top body of Muslims (AIMPLB) is now fighting a revision to the law that delegitimizes it (the right to have four wives).
The strangest thing is that there's a sizable number of women who support the law in its current form. Religion is difficult to comprehend.
Religion... or economics. Marriages traditionally were more about economics (and in case of powerful families, politics) than emotions. The concept of marriage being almost entirely a consideration of the people getting married seems relatively modern and western.
> The strangest thing is that there's a sizable number of women who support the law in its current form.
Different localities have different cultures, and for some, it's good. Say for example, in my locality (Kerala), Muslim men have more than a wife only on certain conditions like:
1. The first wife can't bear a child and the person marries another one without avoiding the earlier wife
2. Marrying widows so as to protect them (there might be occasional cases of exploiting this too, though I'm not aware of any).
I do also have seen a finger countable cases where a man marries some women to threaten other wives. But so far, I remember only two such cases in my neighborhood, and none in my family. Usually such men get really less support from the community.
So women having such an experience shall be supporting the current law.
When you comment about culture, be sure you know something about it.
It's pretty much hard to get a woman married once divorced (pretty much every village in India at least, to say). But for males that isn't usually the case.
And considering Islam, it is men's duty to protect and feed his women, not the other way. I think this is true for all Abrahamic religions.
In Islam, this is even true when the women is rich. That is, the ownership of women's property won't change before or after marriage. The man have to provide food and shelter to his wife and children regardless of the women's wealth. Women is free from such duties. There are also other issues like inheritance (finding the true father of child), or considering the spouse equally (to the extend that a person with two wives should spent every alternate day which one wife and the other day with the other. This isn't possible when a woman marry two man, where there is pregnancy period, etc.)
And to answer your question: No. Islam doesn't allow that.
We're moving to a world where women will be equal partners in the workforce, even in India. We should take steps to achieve gender equality faster, and religion steeped in centuries old customs isn't helping.
Women's rights are an absolute, irrespective of whichever religion people belong. If that means striking off what's regressive from the holy books, that's what liberal believers need to do. The sooner we get to Uniform Civil Code, the better.
well, you are imposing your liberal view on others by imposing uniform civil code which will be modelled possiblt after the majority religion in country (india) ?
I think your interlocutor is just trying to show why some Muslim women support polygamy. And there certainly are such women. We can't just dismiss an insight into why that is the case because you dislike the situation, no?
>>The strangest thing is that there's a sizable number of women who support the law in its current form.
Polygamy has/had its uses across history. Also if you don't mass murder girls like they do in India, you inevitably come up with use cases for things like these.
>>Religion is difficult to comprehend.
Its isn't. Religion is social evolution. That a few things don't apply to one person, doesn't mean they don't apply to billions of people.
That article is disingenuous in taking the 1961 survey - the Hindu Marriage Act was just enacted 5 years in 1955 and made polygamy illegal for Hindus. Figures taken today would be vastly different.
There is no State Legislation in India governing Muslim Marriage. According to Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act 1937, the subject of Marriage is included in the List of subjects (Section 2 of the Act) on which Courts will apply only Muslim Personal Law, as a rule for decision where both the parties are Muslim. Muslim Personal Law permits multiple marriages for the Male and it is not illegal for a Muslim Male to marry a second time during the subsistence of his first marriage.
> Islamic laws explicitly allow multiple wives and I know people who have multiple wives.
Sure, but how common is it really? Are you talking 3% of Muslim men? (in which case it's peculiar to regard as a particulalry Muslim thing)
Or 93%?
And what, specifically do we object to about it? I'm against polygamy only in that (at least in situations I know more about such as the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints movement, or FLDS) it seems very heavily entwined with abuse of power and/or underage marriage, and cults. If polygamy was not coupled with those things then I would struggle to identify on what basis (if any) it is objectionable.
The number would be less than 3% because it'd be very difficult to actually pull it off. But the point is that a sizable number of people (mostly men, but women too) believe it should be legal, even if they don't do it themselves.
I completely agree that polygamy by itself isn't objectionable. What's objectionable is allowing it only for men.
The strangest thing is that there's a sizable number of women who support the law in its current form. Religion is difficult to comprehend.