Re: What are your thoughts on polygamous marriage/being a co-wife?
Ohkay. Now it definitely makes sense. Thanks for telling.
Thanks for explaining your name.
Sincerely,
Karachipajama
Re: What are your thoughts on polygamous marriage/being a co-wife?
I call dibs on LahoriDhoti
Re: What are your thoughts on polygamous marriage/being a co-wife?
Its not common where I’m from, doubt its common in Pakistan as a whole. The few cases I do know of, its forced in one way or another, on the women involved, therefore I view it as a social ill. I also can’t see how a self-respecting person can share their spouse with someone, and do find the concept morally questionable.
I was raised with a strong belief in lifelong monogomous relationships, polygamy is not part of my cultural traits. Not going to condone practices which can easily be linked to misogyny, in Pakistan.
Re: What are your thoughts on polygamous marriage/being a co-wife?
I think agar insaan aik hi shaadi achi tarha se nibhalay to bari baat hai.
But I have seen a two wives scenario…both of the ladies hate each other and the husband has no hair left. He does his best but its never enough.
Re: What are your thoughts on polygamous marriage/being a co-wife?
Considering the stigma divorce carries for women in Pak, many of them really don’t have much of a choice.
-
Women in Pakistan needs “guardians” to support and protect them. Husband is the ultimate “guardian” for adult females.
-
She might not be able to conceive.
-
She might be middle aged
Etc.
If she chooses divorce, she chooses a life in bigger despair most of the times. Polygamy is often a form of adultery legalised, where the first wife doesn’t have any choice but to give her consent.
Kind of like saying “husband can’t demand intercourse but rejection of it is reason enough to demand divorce”. A catch22 for the women involved.
Its amazing what some are willing to condone and justify, as long as they or their loved ones aren’t victims of it.
Re: What are your thoughts on polygamous marriage/being a co-wife?
In Islam we can marry up to 4 women and it works as a domino, so if one of the wife dies we can marry again to fill the 4th quota this is the best system ever imagined.
Re: What are your thoughts on polygamous marriage/being a co-wife?
Impractical
Re: What are your thoughts on polygamous marriage/being a co-wife?
Men do not need consent of their first wife to take on a second one. I have no issues with polygamy as long as everyone is consenting to the arrangement but it’s extremely unfair to not require the consent of your first wife.
Yes people can say well the first wife has the right to leave but what if she doesn’t want to leave? What if she just wants to enjoy her life as is without another woman involved. So say there is a couple married for 25 years and the wife is 40 years old. They have a nice home, two kids and life is going well. All of a sudden the husband has a mid life crisis and decides to get married again to a much younger woman. The first wife has no choice but to give up this life or just accept her husband’s brilliant idea? Extremely unfair.
Re: What are your thoughts on polygamous marriage/being a co-wife?
from what i know, they need her consent. If she says no, then he can’t
Re: What are your thoughts on polygamous marriage/being a co-wife?
Nope no consent needed.
Re: What are your thoughts on polygamous marriage/being a co-wife?
Cherry is right. Consent is not required (because if she is not happy with the arrangement, she can always leave him). What is required is informing the first wife. This act of “performing the sunnah” is so precious for some of the men of nowadays, that they do it and hide it from the first wife. That is pure adultery, no matter what anyone says. Your not telling your first wife strips her from the right of leaving you if she is not happy with the your second marriage. Plus, now you are not treating both wives equally, as the second one knows of the first marriage, but the first one is not aware of the second marriage.
Anyhoo, as I said earlier that polygamy was part of Arab culture. Those who say that the act was permitted in islam to help widows and divorced women could not be more wrong. In fact I have two question for them
- Is marrying a widow, the only way to help her? I mean you are so tharki that you cant help a widow without sleeping with her?
- If polygamy is really allowed for such noble cause, then Islam would’ve never put a limit on repeating this good cause. Why there is a limit of four? Why cant you marry 10, 20 or 100? Help as many as you can if polygamy’s only purpose was to help such ladies. Also, if helping widows and divorced women was the reason to allow polygamy, then it would be prohibited to marry a virgin when you are bringing in second wife.
Here is the real deal.
Back in the days, during tribal clashes (which was very common in those days, as you were either a friend, or an enemy), the difference between winner and loser was the numbers. If my tribe has 1000 warriors and you have 400, then it does not matter how brave you are, cause we are going to beat the heck out of you, simply because our numbers are greater than yours. Now because the tribes remained in war for years and years, constant supply of young warriors was a necessity. They only way of doing it was having as many births in a year as possible. Once a woman is pregnant, that factory is locked for 9 months. There is nothing she can do about it. But the guy can go and impregnate another woman. That is why it was just common sense to have men marrying multiple wives, and not wives having multiple husbands (at one time). It was less of sexual pleasures, and more of supply and demand reason. Marriage were a warrior producing factories back then, if you may.
Such arrangement turned men into assets - and because women were often captured and became loundi/Kaneez of the capturer - they were looked as liabilities (hence killing of female infants). This is also the reason why women were married young, because sooner you marry a woman, more kids she can produce.
This may all sound horrific, especially to women of our time - but ladies, if you were living in those days, you would desire such social setup. Without that, you would not be able to see your 30th birthday. Having a hubby who has you as one of his wife was much better option for women of that time, than for the same women to be sold in markets as a kaneez.
Now the reasons vanished, but the tradition carried on. You still can have a good reason to bring in second wife, but as I said in the beginning, its a sin (at least in my book) to do it without telling your first wife.
Re: What are your thoughts on polygamous marriage/being a co-wife?
^ did the new residents like the payasam you prepared for them?
Re: What are your thoughts on polygamous marriage/being a co-wife?
Also, one has to look how the Prophet (SAW) practiced polygamy, in order to see how it’s really supposed to be done.
There wasn’t a wife that was kept secret from the others.
When intents for marrying again were announced by Rasulullah (SAW), he informed his prior wives. This is fact. There is a hadith where he tells Aisha (R).
There are Quranic ayahs, in surah Nisa, I believe where it is clearly stated you can’t take a woman into marriage against her will. You cannot BE with women against their will. They have a right to divorce. So if the reason for divorce is polygamy, that’s still her right. She doesn’t have to live in a social set up that isn’t satisfying to her. That’s why I say, it has to be consentual 360 degrees.
There is not one marriage that the Prophet (SAW) entered into that was based solely on lust, or having a mid-life crisis and wanting to feel young again. There are also Quranic ayahs that guide us on how we should chose our spouses, and hot looks isn’t one of them. Attraction is recognized, but it’s also recognized that love is put into our hearts from Allah for our spouses.
Like anything else if you want to take something Islamic, pervert it, misuse it then go ahead. Allah will ask questions of you on Judgement Day, so I’d be very careful to not mislead people about these things online.
Polygamy is NOT meant to satisfy one’s sexual appetite.
Polygamy is NOT meant to oppress your prior wife (s).
Polygamy is supposed to be consentual 360 degrees.
We all say we don’t understand the concept, yet look around you. Guys simply aren’t monogamous in general. Even with the concept of mongamy, how many men end up cheating, looking at other women, checking out other women, talking to other women?
I think Allah recognizes this is the nature of man. He recognizes it, doesn’t punish men by restricting them to one woman, and allows them to use that nature to create more children and bigger families and support systems. And He makes it so that the process is legal, and everyone is satisfied.
We’ve been culturally ingrained to think monogamy is the way to go, and it probably is, because even the Quran says that monogamy is better than polygamy.
But it doesn’t eliminate it completely because for some families it works. I don’t know why, but it does.
Sure beats having hoards of single women without families and support systems, in an age, where women couldn’t work and support themselves, and had no choice then but to turn to prostitution. Times then were different.
Monogamy works better now because women are able to support themselves, so there are plenty of single unmarried women on the market who sustain themselves and do not need to be part of a polygamous arrangement.
Re: What are your thoughts on polygamous marriage/being a co-wife?
I think of this from my perspective as a single female.
If a man asked me to marry him and he is already married, of course I will say no. I have an income, I have a career, I have education. I am not living in a war zone. I’m safe. I have access to running water, a toilet, refrigerator, and food. I have friends, I have family, I have other people to talk to. I have gupshup! I have my hobbies, my gym, etc.
But if I was living in 600 A.D. , I’d have no choice but to settle for a single man who is a terrible catch, if I wasn’t lucky to be among the prettiest girls in the tribe. And if I didn’t take that option, or there just weren’t enough men in the tribe, because half of them got killed off every time nearby tribes raided us, then I have two choices. I can stay single and probably next time there is a battle/raid, I get picked up and sold into sex slavery. Or I agree to marry one of the more powerful men in the tribe who is buff and fights well and already has 10 wives, and maybe I have a fighting chance at being married, having SOME company even if it’s shared with 10 other women (every 10th night I get to sleep w/my husband), and hopefully I can get some kids out of this, so I have my own nuclear family - me and my kids, that if my husband dies in war or of sickness, then I have some children to rely on and whatever co-wives I was on good terms with.
Just put yourself in that position as a woman and ask what you would do.
It’s not the best of situations, which is why Allah tells men in the Quran, monogamy is better if it’s possible.
But Allah was also mankind’s god when mankind was divided into tribes and there was constant warfare over scarce resources, and people hadn’t started developing proper civilizations where there was general safety and adequate access to resources for everyone.
Re: What are your thoughts on polygamous marriage/being a co-wife?
This is historical reality. People try to pamper up the concept of polygamy today to make it more palatable, but whether we like to accept it or not, for the time period that the world was in the ancient civilizations - harsh, and difficult to survive - polygamy was actually how many women survived. They’d have been dead and starved otherwise.
Re: What are your thoughts on polygamous marriage/being a co-wife?
As for consent.
INFORMING her is REQUIRED. Hiding it, like TLK says, makes it adultery. And you’re not treating the two equally because one knows, and the other doesn’t. Also you are lying, and in Islam, we shouldn’t lie especially to our loved ones. Basic stuff.
I argue that consent IS required. There is no evidence that Rasullullah practiced polygamy to the anger and dismay of a prior wife. There is also no evidence that such a thing happened where a man brought in a wife, and prior wife was angry about it, and that this was considered ok.
If you bring a wife into the picture, and your wife knows about it and DOES NOT CONSENT, you are hurting her. You’re hurting her feelings, you’re creating insecurity for her, you’re not building and solidifying your relationship with her, you’re tearing it down. This will have effect on your children with her also, they will not like a second wife in the picture if this hurts their own mother. So you are now straining your relationship with your kids.
So yeah ,consent IS required. Because to bring in a second wife without prior wife’s consent means that you are subjecting her to polygamy when she doesn’t want it, and you’re forcing her to be in a marriage arrangement she is unhappy with.
I know nowhere in Islam where a hadith or Quranic ayah tells a woman that if such a thing befalls you, that you need to shutup and not say a word and accept it. In fact, Quran says that all marriages - adults need to consent. The woman needs to consent to be in the marriage (generally speaking). That would include being in a polygamous arrangement.
In order to CONSENT TO BE IN A MARRIAGE, you must CONSENT to being in a polygamous arrangement if this is what suits you and your husband. You have a RIGHT to not CONSENT to be in such a marriage, because Quran is clear that a man cannot take a woman against her will.
She doesn’t want to coinhabit with you, she doesn’t need to. She can walk.
Re: What are your thoughts on polygamous marriage/being a co-wife?
But the wife has a right to leave you if she is not happy. Happiness is not the criteria in second marriage. Equal treatment is. That is why consent is not required, but informing is. Simply put, man is saying that “hey, I want to marry this other woman. I also like to remain married to you. What is your decision?”
That is true. In fact woman can have this condition is her Nikahnama that I would have an automatic divorce if he ever brings a second wife on me (or some other wordings of that sort)
Re: What are your thoughts on polygamous marriage/being a co-wife?
Great posts TLK and I completely agree with what you’ve said.
PCG I’m not misleading anyone. As TLK has said, consent is different from informing her. Consent is not required and there is universal agreement amongst all the scholars regarding this issue. Also the Quran and the Hadiths do not mention consent. They have stated monogamy is preferred but if you must, you can marry up to 4 wives and you have to treat them equally. You are reading too much into how the husband is hurting his first wife’s feelings and therefore consent is required. Think about it. There would hardly be any second marriages if consent of the first wife is required because what woman would want to share her husband or have her kids share their father?
Also yes the Prophet (p.b.u.h) only married widows or divorcee but we can’t possibly apply his life example to ordinary Muslim men. Other than his marriage to Khadijah (r.a), he was ordered to marry his other wives. In the Quran there is no qualification of marrying only widows or divorcees etc. It clearly states men may have up to 4 wives provided they are all treated equally. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. So yes a man can marry a younger woman and as long as he treats both wives equally and spends the same amount of time and money on them he is perfectly within the rights granted by our religion. As TLK said this was just Arab culture to make Islam more acceptable and reasonable to the Arab men in that time and era and to also address the issue of lives being lost in constant wars.
There is no need to go on lengthy explanations as to consent being required when it clearly isn’t.
As a disclaimer I’m not trying to portray islam in a negative light. I’m a devout Muslim in spite of finding this bit unfair because my religion means a lot more to me then a verse allowing men four wives.
Re: What are your thoughts on polygamous marriage/being a co-wife?
But you are wrong, women do enjoy multiple husbands or to be more accurate multiple boyfriends, it was shown on public TV, it happens in this remote region in China where men come as tourists looking for a wife, the girls/women let them court for awhile and even allow them to have sex, but in this region all properties belong the women of this region, once a girl/woman is pregnant they very politely tell the father to leave the area, they are not allowed to stay!
Hence old adage (Golden Rule) applies every where on this Earth…One who has the Gold Rules!
Since all property belongs to women only, they do not let the men stay!
Mosuo women - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
and you also know about the Hawaiian culture where the rulers for centuries were women, and to keep the monarchy it in the family they had brother marry their sister so sister could rule without external interference or influence.