Marriage is one of the most controversial issues in Islam, from forced marriage to polygamy. One of the biggest misconceptions is that Muslim women can be forced into arranged marriages. I’ve heard a lot of stories about girls in that situation. It has happened before, and it is happening now.
But, as usual, it is not good to judge Islam by practices held in some Muslim countries, or by some Muslims in foreign countries. Most of the time those marriages happen because of cultural practice, and not really because Islam authorizes it.
First of all, it is key to understand the importance that marriage has in Islam. The Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) explained this in many Hadiths such as: “He who is able to marry should marry, for it keeps the eye cast down and keeps a man chaste” (Bukhari and Muslim) and “Those of you who marry have fulfilled half of the religion, so you must fear Allah regarding the remaining half” (Bayhaqi).
Marriage is more important than just signing a paper; it’s a lifetime commitment that will help you fulfill your religious practice. Many Muslims forget this, forcing their daughters into marriages.
This is a practice that is condemned by Islam since its beginnings. Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) said “The widow shall not be married until she is consulted, and the virgin shall not be married until her consent is obtained. For that it is sufficient that she remains silent” (Abu Huraira).
This means that, if a woman does not like the guy who is proposing to her, she can speak up and refuse to be married.
When we talk about this topic, it usually refers to Aisha, and the age she married. Some believe that she was around eight years old when she got married to Prophet Mohammad.
However, I really advise you to go online and read an article written by T.O. Shanavas and published in 1999 in The Minaret about this subject. It really helps to better understand this “issue.”
Another misconception many have about marriage in Islam comes to the dowry. I’ve had many of my friends tell me that this is a way to “buy a bride” and stuff like that.
It is nothing like that. The dowry is just a “gift” that the groom makes to the bride, and not to the father of the bride. It is required in Islam as part of the marriage, but doesn’t need to be an enormous amount of money; in fact, the Prophet (pbuh) said: “Look for one even if it was an iron ring” (Bukhari and Muslim).
Islam encourages the husband to take care of his wife and be always respectful to her. The Prophet (pbuh) said: “A believing man must not hate a believing woman (his wife); if he dislikes one trait in her, he will find another trait in her with which to be pleased” (Muslim).
That being said, it is time to get into what I would say is the most controversial part of this topic: polygamy. I would be lying to you if I told you that polygamy in Islam is not allowed, because it is. However, just as everything else, things have to be taken within a context.
First of all, polygamy in Islam is restricted to up to four wives. Yeah, it’s still polygamy, but at least it puts a limit to it. Before Islam, men used to have more than four wives.
Let’s just put it the way it is: many think that polygamy is just about sex. And maybe it is because when we place it in today’s world perspective that’s the way we see it. However, polygamy in Islam has a different purpose.
Back in the time of the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) polygamy was often the only option for many women. In fact, as result of the wars that were taking place in the Arabic Peninsula there were more women than men.
Many of those women were widows with children who had nobody to support them financially. Also, many single women would not have found a life partner or have a family if it wasn’t for polygamy.
The Holy Quran says in chapter 4, verse 3: “If you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two, or three, or four; but if you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with them, then marry only one.” We can see how here the word ‘orphans’ is used, thus making reference to the idea of polygamy as a way to help widows and orphans. This verse doesn’t encourage polygamy; it just makes it a legal practice.
In Islam, when a man marries more than one wife, he is expected to be fair to all of them. He has then to provide not only the same financial stability to all of his wives, but also has to have the same “amount of love” for them, which we know is impossible to achieve for human beings.
The Holy Quran also acknowledges this problem in chapter 4, verse 129: “It is not within your power to be perfectly equitable in your treatment with all your wives, even if you wish to be so; therefore, do not lean towards one wife so as to leave the other in a state of suspense.” This verse shows how important it is for a man to be fair to his wives, and discourages the practice of polygamy, by acknowledging the difficulty to achieve this requirement.
Another thing that it is important to note is that in Islam, a man needs the approval of his first wife in order to marry for a second time. If she refuses he has two options, either he doesn’t marry again, or either they divorce, and, as far as I understand, it wouldn’t be polygamy. And if getting one woman’s consent for a second marriage is hard, you can already guess how getting two or three women to agree would be!
Most of the time, we tend to judge the practice of polygamy from “Western perspective” (because believe or not, I’m a “Western”) and it seems to us something terribly humiliating to women and extremely painful to accept.
Well, there I would have to say that we don’t have any better. When a husband cheats on his wife, it is just as humiliating and painful with the difference that at least with polygamy the women are aware of what’s going on.
I’m not trying to say polygamy is good or bad, better or worse, I’m just trying to say that sometimes we should just stop judging things that we are not really fully aware of, and try to fix our own problems first.
Carolina Medellin can be reached at colaya@ut.edu.
i would like to say there is no such thing as forced marrige it is absalutly haram if the girl says no then no merrige
Don’t want To talk for a Long time here i Just wanted to Thank you Calorina and Laura Erdogan For your Explanation … and i thank also Others For Thier Comments ryan questionner and Agatha ..
First Things you Must Know is that all religion accept Polygami all of them ..Except Chriristianity but for the christianity is the Opposite for some vesrion of the Bible it’s not even allowed to get married or to have sex all what women and men must do is to pray and thank God ..But when Yohana Come see that was inacceptable he said that God meant just For Fathers and sister who work on the Church ….. That the First Thing …
and i agree people Must not Judge things that he don’t know about First read Source and than you can interpret ….
Second Polygamie si allowed but it’s disliked in islam ..and myself as a muslum Boy i dn’t have plan to have more than opne wife ..why not cus i am a Modern Boy but cus i am a muslim and i Subbimet to Allah and i know That Allah know better than me and that as a human i can’t deal Justly between to women yeah it’s Hard …” If you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two, or three, or four; but if you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with them, then marry only one.”
“It is not within your power to be perfectly equitable in your treatment with all your wives, even if you wish to be so; therefore, do not lean towards one wife so as to leave the other in a state of suspense.”
I don’t think someone’s point of view has to be perfect to be accepted by everyone’s else. The main thing I can read about this article, is a well-built, structured explanation about a subject that is, most of the time, barely know by us. I am not Muslim, and I come from a Western country, in which prejudice still exists, so my knowledge about this subject might be as shallow as main people’s, therefore, I’m not in the position of judging. And I’m not going to, unlike most of the people do. Like Carolina says, Islam is always related to opression, chauvinism and unfairness towards women. Why? Because the only thing we know about it is what the TV or the medias show us, and we believe in it, as if it was an absolute and irrefutable truth. So why don’t we listen for a second to those who do know and who can explain to us? I have to agree with the fact that polygamy is not fully moral – but take a look around. Is adultery moral? What do we do when we find out about a case of domestic violence? Do we try to stop it? Is that moral?
I’m not trying to justify polygamy, or trying to say it is “the right thing to do”. I’m just saying that “perfection” has not a precise definition in here, and if we are trying to judge notions of which we don’t have full knowledge of, we should first look at our own prejudices and ask someone else if they are truly “perfect”.
First of all I really want to congratulate you Carolina for your work. It is very though to write stuff like this nowadays, it has actually always been hard. As a Puerto Rican converted to Islam, I find it sometimes hard to explain to people my choice. I’m glad you’re speaking up for our community.
A Questioner – I understand what you are trying to say, but I also have to tell you that a forced bride will always be a forced bride. No matter how much you ask girls, if they are being “forced” they are not going to say anything different to what their parents, family, etc… want them to say. I think that the point of this Hadith is that you have to speak up when something is not what you want. I leaved in England for many years, and you will not believe how many forced marriages I saw that were prevent because the girls would go to the Imam and tell them their situation. Of course, that never makes the news. Now, preventing the marriage doesn’t always happen, but still, in ISLAM (I mean the Religion as a base, not as it is sometimes applied) women have the right to speak for themselves. We have a saying in Spanish, that goes “el que calla otorga” which mean “the one who’s silent, agrees.” And we are not Muslims from a base. And I would actually disagree with what you say. Silence IS consent. That’s the reason why so many women experience physical and emotional violence, are raped and beaten up… because they allow it to happen, because they remain SILENT and make it seem like everything is ok. But women have to speak out! They have to stand up for their rights and say this and this and this is happening to me and I won’t let it go on anymore. It’s when you break the silence that things change. And it doesn’t apply only to women but to everything else.
Ryan – I never see where she says in the article that polygamy is immoral. She says that she would be lying if she said it’s not allowed in Islam, but that doesn’t mean that she thinks it is immoral. I get what she tries to say maybe because we have almost the same background, and it comes to when you have to explain to non-muslims about polygamy. Just because it’s something so easily judged as bad, sometimes you kind of wish you could say “it’s not allowed” and get the thing over with instead of going into deeper explanations that sometimes people doesn’t understand. The perfect example, you.
What she is trying to explain is that many times, we (the “non-Muslim people” lets say) have a harder time understanding the reasons for polygamy. Actually, the problem she tells about men dying in wars is a fact and it happened. For a ratio of 4:1 I don’t know, but they were many widow women back at that time. The verse about polygamy was actually revealed during a time of war.
Also the thing you say about “lowering the bar” and “immorality” I think she is just touching to the fact that, as human-beings, we tent to judge everyone else but ourselves. Yes, we say Islam this, and Islam that, and yet #1 we don’t really acknowledge our own problems in our societies #2 we don’t even try to understand Islam or learn about it and we just judge from what we see.
Let me tell you something, I would never let my husband take a second wife. Yet, I understand the reasons why Islam allows polygamy, just as I understand that it is my right in Islam to say no. I don’t think it is immoral, and neither does any Muslim, because we understand the specific requirements and reasons why this was revealed.
As far as the divorce goes, yes, in Islam marriage is supposed to be for life. However, some people can’t get along and have to divorce. There’s a Hadith that says that among the things that God has allowed, the divorce is the one He dislikes the most. I got married with the idea that it’s gonna last forever. However, if my husband starts beating me up, or treating me poorly, there is no reason why I should stay by his side, even though marriage is supposed to last forever. In order to prevent things like that from happening, Islam allows divorce.
Last but not least, YES YES YES women are still forced into marriage. Is it Islamic? NO! And, see? The problem is that when you want to do something wrong, you would always try to justify it. Sadly, nowadays Islam seems to be excuse #1, and you know why? because people don’t know about it. Because if I give you for excuse my religion which you don’t know anything about, you’re gonna buy it. Why do you think that Taliban forbade women to go to school and learn how to read and write?? because they didn’t want them to know they had rights and that Islam granted them rights. Now sometimes people comes and tells me “the Taliban were applying the religion, then the way Afghanistan is is the way Islam is” well… no. If you go and study Islam, from the sources, and tell me that again, I will believe you… But is you go to Islam and study the sources, you won’t tell me that but rather “oh far off were those dudes.” And yes, forced marriage is a cultural issue. My husband is Turkish and I can tell you that forced marriage has never occurred in his family, and they are very conservative.
I think that it is very important that Carolina acknowledges and admits those problems, because it’s something that many converts don’t do. And it is not until with admit it that we can help change it. We have to learn to differentiate between culture and religion, and study stuff, research stuff and go to the bottom of the things, because, everything is not always the way it seems.
Once again Carolina, congratulations. Keep up with the good work, keep educating yourself, learning more and more, and writing more and more! I think I speak for many when I say “thank you.”
>>”…For that it is sufficient that she remains silent” (Abu
>>Huraira).
>>This means that, if a woman does not like the guy who is proposing
>>to her, she can speak up and refuse to be married.
Silence is not consent.
There are many reasons why a forced bride may be silent. Perhaps her life is in danger. Perhaps there is social pressure.
It doesn’t matter. Silence is not consent. Silence is what permits women to be abused at the hands of patriarchal societies and at the words and fists of their abusive spouses. Silence lets women be raped over and over again by men they do not know who are their “husbands”.
Silence is not consent.
I recommend that you seriously look at yourself, Carolina, and seriously reflect on this fact. Perhaps go to the V-Day celebrations and understand how power structures work.
Carolina,
First, thanks for writing. It is fascinating to see how you rationalize the teachings of Islam.
There are, however, some problems with your logic here. First, you start from the assumption that polygamy is immoral, yet you do not establish why it is immoral. Why do you immediately assume that polygamy is immoral? (FYI, I do not believe polygamy is necessarily immoral. Maybe you should rethink your position on polygamy.)
You then immediately try to justify why it is acceptable in Islam. So, here’s your first problem: If polygamy is immoral, then justifying polygamy does not make it moral. You’re trying to take an immoral action, paint it up pretty, then pretend that it is not immoral. That doesn’t work. A “pretty” immoral act is still immoral.
Additionally, your justifications are based on misinformation. You claim, as do members of other religions that have practiced polygamy (e.g., Mormons) that the reason was to allow single women to marry. Yet you cite no source for this claim. It is unlikely that there were very many more women than men during the periods you are claiming (i.e., 610-today) in most of the predominantly Islamic regions. Yes, men were more likely to die in war, but women often died in childbirth during these times. There are more women, but not enough to justify a 4 to 1 ratio. Ergo, the claim that polygamy was instituted by Allah to allow all women to marry and be cared for is a justification not based in reality. Most anthropologists today would claim that a small percentage of men engaged in polygamy, typically to illustrate their social standing and to gain access, legitimately, to more sexual partners.
My last point on your rationalizations of polygamy… Your last paragraph says, basically, that people shouldn’t judge polygamy until they are leading perfectly moral lives. What you’re basically saying here is, “Polygamy is immoral. I know. I don’t have a good justification for this. But everyone else likely does immoral things. So, as long as you’re doing immoral things, allow my religion to advocate something immoral.” That is not a logical defense of polygamy but a special pleading. It does not make polygamy moral; it just lowers the bar for everyone.
As far as your other claims about Muslim marriage go… You say that marriage is supposed to be for life, but the Quran allows divorce. That seems contradictory. You claim Muslim women cannot be forced into arranged marriages, yet they are all the time, which you admit. Claiming this is a “cultural thing” and not “Islam” is somewhat dishonest as these cultural groups use Islam to justify their practices and religion is part of culture.
I don’t raise these issues with your article to criticize Islam only to point out that the logic of your article isn’t perfect and could use some refining.