Clearly its permissable. But my question is a step ahead of that. Is it encouraged ?
Re: Polygamy encouraged in Islam?
yes and no
(I always wanted to say that)
(the man)There are certain kind of men who would want more women.
(the woman and kids)There are some women who would keep their hose intact, kids keeping same social setting, those women allow that instead of hubby cheating, or divorcing.
(other woman) She get name/inheritance for her kids from such marriage, rather then hiding or worst kids with no father.
(the man again) A-hole have to pay the price for fulfilling needs, in islam there are no free meals. You eat you pay, clean, cut salad for next meal kind of thing.
(society) less faster kids, less crime + issues.
(The man warned) quran says, DO NOT do it, if you can not do justice.
PS: I addressed only one reason why man would want to do it. Some big heart-ed man might want to support another woman/family. (I can not imagine that… beyond me)
PS2: As a dude, I DO NOT feel encouraged. I mean would you be happy, if your office doubled your responsibility, with most refined accountability ?
Re: Polygamy encouraged in Islam?
In my understanding, everything about marriage is encouraged once, twice, thrice, fourth but not beyond it. The “conditions”, or rules of thumb, or wisdom that applies to the first marriage must also be applicable to the second, third, and fourth.
There is no mandate to marry more than once. There is no notion of “more the merrier”. There is no mandate to marry ATLEAST once. Marriage is simply encouraged and prohibited beyond 4th at a time.
May Allah forgive me, and guide me to knowledge and wisdom if I have misinformed anyone here. This is just my personal understanding
Re: Polygamy encouraged in Islam?
Also, I might add that Islam is the ONLY religion that puts a limit on polygamy to 4! Hindu religion has no limit, and their gods had hundreds of wives, the limit imposed today in by the secular court in India. Christianity and Judaism today don’t have limits or rights imposed. Quran is the ONLY book on this planet that was the first to legislate women’s rights, wives’s rights, and limit polygamy to a mere 4.
So from an Islamic implementation of polygamy no rights are violated, or feelings disregarded, or lives damaged.
Re: Polygamy encouraged in Islam?
In India polygamy is illegal except for Muslims - therefore this is clearly NOT a secular court, since it is differentiated on the basis of religion.
Indian mythology does have Gods practicing polygamy but not in hundreds - you may be referring to kings and emperors and some demi-Gods. Remember what Hindus call Gods is different from what other religions such as your call God. For example, Rama is a God but his father Dasaratha was not considered a God. With mythology it is impossible to know what parts to take literally and not to. For example, when you read about Pros.Muhamad’s ascent to heaven, I have heard many argue for that to be a physical fact versus many argue it is a figurative one…scholars wiser than me will know better for sure.
So we can only talk about present day known facts. From what I gather it appears that Islam allows polygamy subject to the man being able to adequately and equally support the wives and children.
In that case I have two questions
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If a really rich man such as say an emir in the gulf has so much wealth that he can support 10 wives, why is he also limited to four? That tells me that there has to be some considerations other than economic - what are they?
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Similarly if a woman is rich, is she allowed several husbands and families as well? (I don’t think so, but please confirm)
Re: Polygamy encouraged in Islam?
It is allowed but I don’t think it’s encouraged. One can marry more than one woman but both need to be treated equally. If that’s possible go for it otherwise resist.
Re: Polygamy encouraged in Islam?
According to certain interpretations, it is not encouraged because of two Quranic verses: Surah 4 Verse 3 and Surah 4 Verse 129](http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/quran/verses/004-qmt.php). The first one allows a Muslim man to marry up to four wives, under the condition that he treats all of them equally. If he cannot, then he is instructed to marry only one woman. However, the second one clearly states that:
YUSUFALI: Ye are never able to be fair and just as between women, even if it is your ardent desire…
PICKTHAL: Ye will not be able to deal equally between (your) wives, however much ye wish (to do so).
SHAKIR: And you have it not in your power to do justice between wives, even though you may wish (it)…
Therefore, some people believe that both verses combined are discouraging polygamy, encouraging monogamy and basically teaching a man to marry one woman.
^ I agree. Polygamy is allowed but discouraged, just like divorce is allowed but discouraged
Re: Polygamy encouraged in Islam?
There is a verse that says something to the effect that marry 1, 2, 3, or 4, but if you can’t treat them all equally and with justice or you fear you’ll be unfair and hurt someone, then it’s better that you marry just 1.
So that favors a system of monogamy over polygamy.
It isn’t prudent at that time to totally ban polygamy altogether. There were many families living in set-ups where one man was married to 4+ women. So where would all those women go, if a sudden ruling was made to stop polygamy entirely? In an economy where women had no way to feed themselves, that set up was a disaster. So it was limited to 4, and monogamy was ENCOURAGED, to slowly weed out the practice of polygamy.
Same concept with slavery. It wasn’t totally prohibited, because freeing so many slaves would have been a catastrophic event, since those people would be without shelter and without work. All on the streets. We saw this here in the US, and result was Jim Crow laws, and other stupid atrocities that the African American community is still dealing with. So an approach of positive reinforcement for GOOD behavior such as freeing slaves was encouraged. Result - a bad habit slowly was weeded out of a society, without putting overload on the economy and causing mass hungry mobs.
Re: Polygamy encouraged in Islam?
Well, it is sunnah
Re: Polygamy encouraged in Islam?
They say
“if you are not satisfied by a woman, you will never be satisfied by more”
Re: Polygamy encouraged in Islam?
No not in Islam but in Hindu culture: This was told by a friend from India that in some Hindu culture the wife of the Older Brother where younger brothers (Dewars) are still living in the household, the Dewars are allowed to sleep with their older Brother’s wife (Jettani), and seems this practice goes on even amoung Hidus living in the USA!
Re: Polygamy encouraged in Islam?
Very thoughtful response/questions. I enjoyed reading it.
To the best of my knowledge, prophet muhammed’s (pbuh) ascent was as real and as physical as our real and physical experiences. The details of the journey and remarkably vivid and there is no two versions of the description. As we understand from modern science that time is relative for nano particles, humans and Jinns, angles. No human can explain “how” it could have occurred, but the narratives says that he was not in his bed during the journey and when he returned the bed was still warm from his body heat. This suggest his physical absence, although so short that bed was still warm upon his return.
to your questions:
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You are correct to point out there there is greater wisdom in the limit of four wives. simple answer is: because God, the Most Wise out of His Mercy has clearly said so with a specific number in the Quran instead of leaving it upto our efforts (as per all previous centuries). I would imagine, the reasons could be related to biological, pathological, psychological, genetic risks, etc on the individual level, and right legislation, inheritance administration, social welfare, etc on a macro society level.
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Women can not have multiple husbands at a time. They can remarry after divorce, or death of husband after 40-day period of Iddat. It is a restriction to safeguard and protect women from abuse. Society generally tends to be male dominated because of natural physical, and emotional differences owing to testosterone and physical strength. Example: the Greeks during the time of Plato and Aristotle built a strong intellectual and powerful civilization, but women were traded as slaves and didn’t have right to ownership and votes. Husbands in Hindi are called “Pati” or owner, as in “crore-pati” (owner of a crore). While the wive is called Patni, the owned. Women in the US didn’t have the legal right to vote until 1913. Looking at the statistics of human trafficking records, and domestic violence, sexual abuse and sexual assault in the industrialized world, the majority of the victims tend to be women and girls.
In my personal view marriage in Islam is encouraged in actuality to protect women and give them rights and social standing on equal footing. No man becomes public property when single, every women will be hit upon if she is single and will be approached by all sorts of men constantly.
today’s industrialized world, women have the right to work and be part of the labour force, they have the right to vote,the right to sue, the right divorce, the right to abort pregnancy, the right to travel alone; yet their bodies must be made public property with makeup, revealing , or sexualized dresses particularly in jobs like restaurant servers, bar servers, even retails stores now. That is effectively the price they pay for all their “rights” to be accepted on “equal market” footing shoulder to shoulder. Just looking at the corporate senior executives, only a very tiny percentage is women. Its all a boys club in the corporate world all over
Re: Polygamy encouraged in Islam?
There will always be debate between literalists and mystics, regardless of your religion I guess. At some point it becomes a matter of faith and not proof.
Interestingly it is not just modern science but also the Veda Suthras that say time is relative. Actually one of the Suthras show mathematical proof and associated quantum.
Re: Polygamy encouraged in Islam?
with everything there are two dimension, body and soul - physical, the metaphysical. the seen and the perceived. both are real.
it is quite possible for Suthras to contain this.