Polygamy: Between the Prevention and Restrictive Measures of Governments and Misrepresentation and Distortion of Organizations

(Translated)

They have worked, and still do, for many years as organizations, coalitions, women's and human rights associations, and have placed as their priority the reduction of polygamy either through the relentless demand to amend personal status laws and punish those who violate them, or through meetings and lectures with women and specialists in order to raise awareness, as they claim, about the dangers contained in the phenomenon of polygamy and its negative consequences for the status of women, children, the family and society as a whole.

These calls have succeeded in some countries in the Muslim world. Tunisia and Turkey have criminalized polygamy and prevented it. Morocco, Algeria and the Punjab province, one of the largest provinces in Pakistan, have made polygamy almost impossible. In addition, many countries have rejected the idea of ​​polygamy categorically in recent times after the governments activated the role of women's committees, human rights organizations and civil society organizations, especially those concerned with women's rights, in order to prevent the spread of the phenomenon of polygamy. This is by raising the slogan of equality and empowering of women and giving them justice, because they viewed polygamy as prejudice against the first wife!

In Turkey, polygamy was formally abolished in 1926. According to the personal status law applied in Turkey, the second marriage is considered null in the event that it occurs, with the right of the first wife to file a divorce case in case it is proven. Despite legal restrictions, polygamy is still practiced in illegal and twisted ways, especially in remote and tribal areas in the south and east of the country through Shariah contracts only. Article 237 of the Penal Code stipulates that "If the Turkish Government finds that the marriage contract is customary and not registered in the municipality, the law shall sentence the writer of the contract to imprisonment for a period between three months and six months in addition to the spouses." Despite the ban on polygamy, statistics from the last year show that there are more than 187,000 cases of polygamy.

In Tunisia, where Chapter 18 of the Personal Status Code explicitly states the prohibition of polygamy, the law also grants women the right to divorce their husbands. According to the second paragraph of the Penal Code, anyone who violates this ban will be liable to corporal and financial penalties. "Anyone who marries in the while being already married and before the dissolution of the former marriage is punished with one year imprisonment and a fine of two hundred and forty thousand francs or one of the two penalties”.

The law in Morocco did not explicitly prohibit polygamy, but it could be said that it was indirectly prevented. Since 2003, the Family Code has established two basic conditions for accepting polygamy in order to legalize it: the first requirement is that the one wishing to have more than one wife must have the financial capacity to support two or more families; and the second is that there must be an objective and logical justification that allows him to request permission for polygamy for the approval of the judge. The Court now refers to the need to inform the first wife and express her consent. This law has succeeded in reducing polygamy to less than one thousand cases per year.

The restrictions on polygamous marriages are also practiced in Algeria. The government enacted a law passed by parliament since 2005 that prevents men from remarrying without the consent of their first wife.

In the Punjab province of Pakistan, the situation is not very different. The husband is forbidden to marry another woman without the permission of his first wife. The law also stipulates a one-year prison sentence with a fine of 500,000 rupees (about 5,000 dollars) on anyone who remarries without the permission of the first wife.

On the other hand, in countries that do not deal with the law with those who want to practice polygamy like the countries that prevent and punish those who marry more than once, slogans are raised and many campaigns are carried out to encourage the society to accept polygamy and urge men to practice polygamy to deal with the problem of spinsterhood and increasing divorcees and widows, like in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and other countries.

In Saudi Arabia, Saudi women occasionally resort to social media sites to launch campaigns to encourage men to marry more than one woman. The last of which is a campaign under the hashtag "We demand that polygamy is made compulsory”.

In Egypt in 2016, a women's initiative was launched under the name of "your husband is my husband". In 2017, the initiative was called "polygamy is the Shari’”.

There is a page on Facebook entitled "Together for Polygamy in Morocco" and a Facebook campaign in Algeria entitled "Mathna Wa Thulath Wa Ruba’” [second, third and fourth].

It is surprising that these initiatives and campaigns are launched in countries that do not prevent polygamy, but like other Muslim countries, they suffer from many life and economic problems that are not limited and do not only stand as an obstacle to polygamy, but also to young people who wish to marry in general, such as high dowry and some customs and traditions of marriage that are expensive. In addition to the exaggerated demands of the family in light of the deteriorating economic conditions and the resulting high prices and high rates of unemployment, poverty and destitution, all of this led to the delayed age of marriage among young people and thus emerged the problem of high rates of spinsterhood in the Islamic world, in addition to the spread of Western culture in the Muslim countries that claim to preserve the dignity of women and their families from the oppression of men!

The Muslim countries forbid what Allah has permitted, turning a blind eye to illegal (according to Shari’) relationships until it reached the case that some have legislated and codified abnormal and forbidden relations under the pretext of respect for personal life and the implementation of international agreements and to please the West. The West refuses for the best Ummah in the world to procreate to ensure its survival, because this will lead one way or another to the decline in their numbers and end of their societies, which are witnessing a decline in the proportion of births compared to the high mortality rate, resulting in societies of the elderly useless to the inhumane economic wheel. So we see that there is a trend in some Western societies to promote polygamy to increase childbearing in order to increase the population, because of the sharp decline in the number of births, which affects the population in a way that may lead to a decline in the proportion of indigenous people versus immigrants, as in the old continent (Europe). Experts and researchers at the University of Sheffield, Britain, confirmed according to a study of more than 700 cases from different countries where polygamy is prevalent that the secret of a happy and quiet life away from differences is in getting a second wife. We have started to hear about associations in the West calling for polygamy because it brings psychological, social and health benefits.

Polygamy was considered a natural phenomenon in the Muslim countries until the advent of colonization that launched a campaign of distortion and ridicule of Islam and its Shariah rules. It worked on the enactment of laws that were not related to Islam, but opposed the concepts of true Deen, to replace concepts that are contrary to the rules of Islam, including polygamy. This is by portraying that all problems of the Islamic society and all the problems that are being raised today, like the family issues, including oppression of the husband, and the violence practiced by the wife in addition to the disadvantages of polygamy are all caused by the domination of the male society.

In addition, deliberate and systematic work was carried out by the societies and governments of the colonizer to empower women; that is, to separate them from men and their need for them by providing employment opportunities, or to create professional courses for them because women, according to their tendentious call, who are sufficed will not accept a marriage that deprives them of their rights and violates their humanity and insults their dignity, and they will not accept a second wife to ruin their lives and destroy the future of their children!

O Muslim women, know that the problems and hardships you are suffering from are not caused by men or the second wives, but rather by the failure of states and governments to look after your affairs, including the creation of generations and their upbringing in accordance with Islamic culture, not on the basis of corrupt influencing Western culture that exists largely in the media and educational curricula.

Know that married life is not free from problems, and this is part of life. The solution is not to fight against the rules of the Deen or to prevent them, but rather to hold accountable those who deprived you from the pleasure of living, spread hate and bitterness, and spread a culture of selfishness. To fight a Shariah rule and issue because of these problems is harmful to the Ummah, and there are many problems that are solved by polygamy, and it is prohibition of a Halal (rule), with the assertion that the permissibility of polygamy is unconditional and it has no divine reason for it (I’la), according to Allah’s saying:

﴿فَانْكِحُوا مَا طَابَ لَكُمْ مِنَ النِّسَاءِ مَثْنَى وَثُلاثَ وَرُبَاعَ﴾

“then marry those that please you of [other] women, two or three or four” [An-Nisa’: 3]

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Rana Mustafa