Talk:Polygamy in Islam: Difference between revisions

More men than women in Muslim countries: List of countries by sex ratio (Permanent link)

Muhammad married poor widows to save them from destitution

I am struggling to think of even ONE woman whom Muhammad married for that reason. A simple list will show that his marriages didn't happen that way.

1. Khadija - a WEALTHY widow who saved Muhammad from poverty.

2. Ayesha - daughter of one of the few Muslims who actually had some money. She had to break her engagement to a bourgeois pagan in order to marry Muhammad who, for the first five years, could not even afford to feed her properly.

3. Sawda - a tanner and perfume-mixer who was quite capable of supporting herself. She had a son who was old enough to work, and they lived with her father and brother, who were not wealthy, but could certainly afford to feed them.

4. Hafsa - daughter of just about the only other Muslim who had money. She was widowed at a time when there were more Muslim men than women (the other Badr widows remarried quickly and monogamously); so, had Hafsa not wished to live with her parents, surely one of the bachelors would have agreed to marry this 18-year-old blonde whose father was Muhammad's second-best friend.

5. Zaynab b Khuzayma - when she married Muhammad, her uncle in Mecca underwrote her dower. Doesn't this tell you that her family would have taken care of her? (Her own father was dead; this uncle had been the father of her second husband; and his son - her cousin and former brother-in-law - was the one who negotiated her marriage to Muhammad.) Zaynab just wanted to stay in Medina among the Muslims. The only reason she was single at all was that another of her husbands (the third or fourth), a Muslim "hero", had divorced her for no particular reason. If she had failed to find a fifth husband, perhaps the community could have found a way to pay her for her charity work among the Muslim poor?

6. Hind - she had four children, a rejecting family and no money, but she wasn't as poor as she looked. In the first place, she was a tanner, so she could have supported herself. In the second place, she was pregnant, so perhaps she planned to hire herself out as a wet nurse. In the third place, she REFUSED successive proposals of marriage from Abu Bakr, Omar and Muhammad himself. She didn't want to remarry, and Muhammad had to pressure her into accepting him.

7. Zaynab b Jahsh - she was a tanner, leather-worker and pearl-piercer who was well able to support herself. Her eldest brother lived nearby and supported her initial refusal to marry Zayd. Even after Zayd divorced her, she obviously had no economic need to remarry. In fact, she continued working after she married Muhammad.

8. Rayhana - she was only a widow because Muhammad had killed her husband. Even so, she did not need Muhammad's shelter. The Nadir tribe in Khaybar were frantically buying back as many of the Qurayza women and children as they could locate on the slave-markets. Rayhana had been a Nadir by birth, so they would certainly have bought her if Muhammad had allowed it.

9. Juwayriya - she was only a widow because the Muslims had killed her husband. Her WEALTHY father was willing to pay an outrageous ransom to buy her back.

10. Ramla - when her husband died, the Muslim community in Abyssinia was reduced to four married couples, three single women and twelve single men. So Ramla could have remarried monogamously if she had wanted to. When she married Muhammad by proxy, the King of Abyssinia not only underwrote her dower, but carelessly added an extra zero to the amount. This tells us that the Muslims under his protection were by no means destitute. Perhaps that was why they didn't return to Medina until 628, although nothing had prevented their doing so as early as 622.

11. Safiya - she was only a widow because Muhammad had killed her husband, and she was only impoverished because he had stolen her tribe's wealth. Most of what Muhammad owned in Medina after 628 really belonged to Safiya! He could have kept her there as a hostage, at no honest expense to himself, without bothering to marry her. Alternatively, he could have let her stay in Khaybar with her surviving family, who made their living by date-farming.

12. Maymuna - owned some property in Mecca and lived at the expense of her WEALTHY brother-in-law.

13. Mariya - a domestic maid who was already living at Muhammad's expense whether he slept with her or not.

14. Mulayka - she only a widow because the Muslims had killed her husband. Her family was willing to feed her, and she had an alternative bridegroom lined up. Muhammad divorced her within six months, so he obviously didn't really care about her economic condition.

15. Fatima (Aliya) - her father was not poor. Muhammad divorced her within weeks, so he obviously didn't really care about her economic condition. Nor did her father, who remained in Muhammad's (and Omar's) favour for years to come. He abandoned his daughter, and because the Muslim commuity didn't have a better way to support its poor, Fatima had to work as a dung-collector.

16. Asma - a WEALTHY Yemeni princess.

17. Amra - her family must have been able to keep her, since they tried to prevent her marriage to Muhammad.

Perhaps another day I'll explain why none of Muhammad's marriages conferred such compelling political advantage that he was justified in breaking the "four wives only" rule.1234567 (talk) 18:10, 14 June 2012 (PDT)

Thanks for that. This page (like the Safiyah page) will be updated/rewritten. So all this extra info is much appreciated! --Admin3 (talk) 18:17, 14 June 2012 (PDT)

Muhammad committed polygamy out of political necessity

According to the Muslim apologists, "Muhammad married most of his wives for political reasons. He only married so many women at one time out of political necessity."

First of all, this reasoning does not convince a Jew, a Christian or a Western feminist. No matter how urgent the needs of state, they argue, nothing justifies having more than one wife at a time. If Muhammad could not see any way around his political problems except polygamy, that simply proves he was not a prophet.

Secondly, we might take the line that polygamy was normal in seventh-century Arabia, and Muhammad was not doing anything wrong by the standards of his own culture. That will not convince a Jew or a Christian that he was a true prophet, but it might convince a modern Westerner that he was a decent person by the standards of his day. In that case, however, we still have to ask why Muhammad limited other Muslims to four wives each, yet at one point in his own life, he had eleven wives plus the intention of adding more. When Ghaylan ibn Salama became a Muslim, he had to divorce six of his ten wives – even though this was in early 630, when Muhammad himself had exactly ten wives! Why did Muhammad pick the apparently random number of four and enforce this as the maximum number of wives, yet break this rule himself? If the answer is that it was politically necessary, we would expect some exceptional political situation that, in order to ensure the future survival of Islam, required Muhammad to marry all those women.

Many articles have been written by Muslim apologists to explain what these exceptional political circumstances were. Here are a few.

http://www.al-islam.org/lifeprophet/25.htm

http://www.ispi-usa.org/muhammad/appendix2.html

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-edpahmed04120402dec04,0,6846801.story

Such writers do describe the political advantages of Muhammad’s marriages (at some sacrifice of factual accuracy) but they never attempt to explain why the political crisis was so urgent and compelling that Muhammad was required to break his own rules. They never face the question: “If Muhammad had not married this woman, what would have been the probable consequences for Islam?”

Let us try a thought-experiment. Imagine that Muhammad’s first wife, Khadija bint Khuwaylid, had lived another 15 years. Imagine that she, and not Ayesha or any other woman, had smoothed his pillow as he lay dying. Imagine that Khadija had remained his only wife ever. Would this have been a great disaster for Islam? What would have been the consequences for the great political crises of Muhammad’s life? Let us briefly list the major political disasters that Muhammad faced, together with a few words on how he handled them.

1. 616-619. The Quraysh enforced a trade blockade against the Hashim clan in Mecca. The Muslims survived by living of Khadija’s wealth. Although the Muslim historians do not state this directly, the blockade was probably lifted due to the Satanic Verses compromise.

2. 622. The Quraysh pronounced the death sentence on Muhammad. He survived by escaping to Medina and moving his community there. If Khadija had been alive, I suppose she and not Sawda would have accompanied Fatima in the rearguard party.

3. 624-627. The Jews in Medina announced that they did not believe Muhammad was the Messiah, which seriously dented his credibility with the local pagans. He ejected two of the tribes and killed the third. He was now “Duke” of Medina. If Khadija had been alive, I imagine the Angel Gabriel would have brought all those urgent messages about the treachery of the Jews in her house instead of in Hind’s.

4. 627. The Meccans, together with a few Bedouin chiefs and exiled Jews, besieged Medina, hoping to kill Muhammad in the battle. Muhammad dug a trench around Medina and so the siege failed. Muhammad then conquered a Kilab tribe and secured from them a trade blockade against Mecca. Over the next three years, Mecca was starved out. If Khadija had been alive, I expect Muhammad would have conquered the Kilabites and blockaded Mecca in exactly the same way.

5. 628. Meanwhile, Muhammad took a pre-emptive strike against the surviving Jews. After a war of conquest against Khaybar, every Jew in Arabia was reduced to vassalage. There was a danger that their Ghatafan allies would retaliate, so Muhammad stock-piled weapons in anticipation. If Khadija had been alive, I expect she would have been the one who carried the first aid box to Khaybar.

6. 630. After Mecca was starved out, Muhammad mustered an army of ten thousand and marched in to conquer the city. The “Duke” of Mecca was converted at swordpoint, and the city surrendered. This served as an Awful Warning to the Ghatafans, and even the Yemenites negotiated an “alliance” (surrender) rather than face the Muslim armies. If Khadija had been alive … it’s really difficult to imagine how anything at all would have been different.

7. 630–632. Muhammad conquered whatever was left of Arabia. By the time of his death, he was effectively “King”. If Khadija had been alive, she would have been “Queen”.

Have you noticed how NONE of these political crises was solved by a marriage alliance? If Khadija had survived, it would have made little difference to the fortunes of Islam. Muhammad would have conquered the peninsula and imposed his religion upon it just the same.

So let’s try a different thought-experiment. What would Islam have lost if Muhammad had failed to marry any of the other women?

1. If he hadn’t married Ayesha, Sawda or Hafsa, he might have had to think of a different way of raising money. However, what with begging, plundering and taxing, Muhammad seemed to have had that problem worked out.

2. If he hadn’t married Zaynab bint Jahsh, he would have saved himself quite a bit of trouble, as this marriage – the first to break his “four wives only” rule – caused him social embarrassment on several fronts.

3. If he hadn’t married Mulayka, Fatima, Asma or Amra, he wouldn’t have had to divorce them, which might have kept his relations with their families smoother. But never mind about this – only Asma was of any political importance, and the divorce proved that even she was not as important as her family had hoped.

4. If he hadn’t married Zaynab bint Khuzayma, Hind or Maymuna, nothing at all would have changed.

5. If he hadn’t taken four slave-concubines who were of no political importance of all, it’s just possible that he could have avoided the accusation of being a womaniser.

Only three of Muhammad’s marriages can seriously be considered “political” in any sense. These three marriages were all contracted in 628. But how crucial were the political issues in that year?

6. Juwayriya was the daughter of a petty chief whose tribe was flattened in a single raid. This tribe was not going to be any more trouble to Muhammad regardless of whether he married the chief’s daughter. Muhammad conquered plenty of more important tribes over the years, but he did not need to marry the chiefs’ daughters in order to maintain their submission.

7. Ramla was the daughter of Abu Sufyan, the “Duke” of Mecca. She had defected to Islam several years earlier and had barely spoken to her father since. It did not seem to bother her that the Muslims had killed her brother at the Battle of Badr or that Muhammad had sent assassins after her father (these assassins failed their assignment, but everyone knew that Muhammad had tried it). So marrying Ramla did not create any kind of “alliance” with Abu Sufyan. Rather, it enabled Muhammad to deliver a psychological snub to his enemy, along the lines of: “Sucks to you! Look who’s sleeping in my bed!” Even when Abu Sufyan tried to negotiate through his daughter for peace with Muhammad, she refused to cooperate. This marriage might have been a psychological blow to the unlucky father, but it is unlikely that he was so discouraged that it directly contributed to his eventual defeat.

8. Safiya was the First Lady of Khaybar; she was related to everyone of importance in the Jewish community. Muhammad married her after he had humiliated Khaybar. This “alliance” brought no advantages to the Jews. The dying Muhammad actually stated in Safiya’s presence that he wanted all the remaining Jews ejected from Arabia! It is highly doubtful that the marriage discouraged the Jews from further rebellion against Muhammad. The reason they gave him no more trouble was that they were not powerful enough to do so. If they had been strong enough to defy Muhammad, they would probably not have been deterred by the fact that Safiya was a “hostage” in Medina; in true Jewish spirit, Safiya herself would have expected her people to sacrifice her for the greater good.

If Muhammad had not married these three women, it is practically certain that their respective tribes would not have altered their behaviour in any way. He did not need these marriages for political reasons. The brides were simply trophies.

So what did motivate Muhammad to marry all those women at once? If it was not politics, perhaps we could form a hypothesis along a more personal line...1234567 (talk) 22:54, 30 July 2012 (PDT)

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Another Muslim Perspective Scrutinized

In Islam, why can a man can get married to two, three or four women, while a woman cannot get married to more than one man?

Argumentum Ad hominem "tu quoque" logical fallacy

Yes, 12 weeks out of the year is such a looooooong time. Especially when those weeks are spread out over the entire course of a year. How can men handle the wait? Also, it is a known biological fact that women who live together will have synchronous menstrual cycles - meaning that the man will still have that week every month where he can't have sex, because all of his wives will be menstruating.

And that means old men should continue having children although they might die the next day of old age and be unable to support their families any longer?

And for all the woman's hard work and suffering, her husband should be allowed to sleep with other women because he can't handle the post-natal six-week wait.

So, populating the earth with as many children as possible is more important than the happiness of the wife and the health of the marriage.

This statement is illogical and also scientifically inaccurate.

Not anymore thanks to DNA testing! Paternal testing in the United States costs a few hundred dollars. This is also only relevant if you are obsessed with paternity.

In other words, since the Quran commands that women be dependent on men, then men should be allowed to have multiple sex partners because they are obligated to maintain women.

Two paychecks is a disadvantage? Two men to mow the lawn is a disadvantage?

Since adoption is clearly not an option, and a woman's breeding abilities are more important than anything else.

Allah is responsible for the nature of man...and he made men incapable of monogamy? This argument clearly insults men.

Well guess what? A Muslim man does not need the agreement of his first wife to take a second wife.

This statement is so completely illogical and ridiculous that we're simply going to move on to the next one...

They forgot this quote: [Quran 4:129] 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. Allah said that men will not be able to deal equally with multiple wives...but he still didn't ban polygamy.

In other words, if you can't understand it...shut your brain off. This Muslim's argument is more offensive to men than it is to women.