Polygamy

Allah said in Al-Qur’an: “Fankihu ma ‘taabalakum minan nisai mathna wa thulatha wa rubaa’ fain khiftum alla ta’dilu fa wahidah” which means “So you marry the women two, three or four, but if you are afraid that you can’t be fair (equal treatment to all of them), then (marry) only one”.

The above Quranic verse is an authority that Allah allows Muslim men to have four wives at any one time. However, such privileged comes with a condition and that condition is not something that is easy to fulfill i.e. give equal treatment to each and everyone of them.

“Equal treatment” is a simple self-explanatory phrase but more often than not, those who practice polygamy “overlook” or “choose to overlook” this requirement. The treatment here refers to everything from the foods to the house to the sexual needs. While most of those who practice polygamy thought that they have the capability to have more than one wife, I would say that majority, if not all of them are in fact and indeed do not have such capacity to practice polygamy. Just imagine, when the husband buys foods for his fourth wife, he is also obliged to buy the same foods for his other wives. If the fourth wife is staying in a double storey bungalow and third & second wives are staying in a separate double-storey terrace house while the first wife is staying in a single storey terrace house, that is not fair. To be fair to all of them, the husband must ensure that his wives are staying is a same type of house. If the husband is buying a cloth for the fourth wife, say silk material, the other three wives must also get the cloth of the same quality and definitely not of cotton material.

Further, the husband must spend his time equally among his wives, which means, the husband must move from one place to another on equally number of days basis.

So, is it easy to practice polygamy? Well, it may look easy but believe me, it is hard to practice the true polygamy concept according to the Islamic requirement. This requirement is more important than and harder to achieve as compared to our ISO certification. I bet, if SIRIM is to asses husbands who practice polygamy in term of the equal treatment, 99.999% will not get the ISO certification. I know a lot of men are using/depending on this Quranic verse when they want to have more than one wife but they only look at the first portion of the verse. Should they look at the second portion of the verse (and really understand the express and implied meaning of the verse) when Allah said “but if you are afraid that you can’t be fair (equal treatment to all of them), then (marry) only one”, do you think that they dare to practice polygamy? I will say “NO”, they won’t.

Such malpractice makes polygamy, which is initially a good Islamic concept to be seen as a tool of victimizing the women. There was one time my former Boss (a non-muslim) asked me about polygamy when we were together in her car on the way back to office. Initially, I explained to her about it. But after sometimes, we were debating about it, as I agree with the Islamic concept of polygamy, which she is totally against. Finally, she asked me one question – Will you allow your wife to have four husbands including you? My answer was a straight and firm “NO”. So, she said if a man does not want his wife to have more than one husband, he should do the same to his wife. Sounds logic but that is not the case. I told her, if a woman is allowed to have more than one husband at any one time, how are we then going to determine on the child’s paternity? Who is the father? Well, to certain extend, I managed to shut her mouth but then she asked me about the inequality in term of treatment given to the wives, which to certain extent I do agree with her that most men who practice polygamy are not fair to their wives. Then she suggested to me that since I agree with her, don’t I think that polygamy should be stopped from being practised. Wow! Looks like I was caught by my own words, but then I told her that we do not simply abolish a good system just because some people in charge of the system abuse the system. I gave her an example of traffic system. We have speed limit on the road. While it is a good system (to have the speed limit), are we going to abolish the speed limit system just because most drivers (including me…hehehe) always beat the speed limit? So, by that, we ended our conversation (coincidentally, we reached our office by that time).