Contrary to what is commonly assumed, there is no advanced notion of women’s inferiority in the Qur’an with regards to polygamy. While there are restrictions to how many wives a man can attain (four), the purpose of placing such restrictions was to protect women; it was never intended to justify or meet the sexual needs of men.
Polygamy has not only deviated from its original Qur’anic position, but many argue that it is in direct conflict with the moral teachings of the Qur’an, which contains messages of equality and above all, justice.
Passages in the Qur’an on Polygamy
There are two passages in the Qur’an that mention the practice of polygamy (4:2-6; 4:127-129) and what becomes clear upon reading them is that the Qur’an is not discussing polygamy in terms of women in general, but specifically, it refers to orphan girls whose property was being misappropriated and abused by their guardians.
The need to place restrictions on marriage came about at a time when there was an abundance of orphans and widows as a result of frequent wars. Orphaned girls, having come of age, often found that their guardians were unwilling to return their property. These guardians would resort to tactics such as exchanging the ward’s valuable properties for their own, far less valuable ones.
The more obvious approach was to simply marry the guardian as a means of maintaining access to their properties. While the Qur’an limited these marriages, economic responsibility for the maintenance of a wife could counterbalance the access to the wealth of the orphaned female through the responsibility of management. These passages demonstrate that, as a lesser evil, guardians were permitted to marry up to four female wards rather than unlawfully consume their wards’ properties in cases where guardians refused to do justice by them.
The Qur’an adds a supplement to such permission by which the guardians are told to do justice to the wards they do marry and “if [they] fear that [they] cannot do justice (to so many),” then they should marry only one (4:3). However, doubt is cast on this stipulation by the later passage, “[y]ou will not be able to deal equally between (your) wives, however much you wish (to do so)” (4:29). This warns about the impossibility of being able to treat more than one wife justly and fairly, thereby demonstrating that monogamy is the preferred marital arrangement in the Qur’an.
The practices of guardians regarding their wards’ properties are mentioned throughout the Qur’an as a particular and recurring theme in Mecca and Medina. The Qur’an was clearly attempting to check this malpractice, for repeatedly it exhorts men not to treat widows and orphans in any way other than in justice or kindness.
Unfortunately, most advocates of polygamy ignore the context in which these passages were written and focus on the clause discussing whether a man can equally support more than one wife, but they do so in the material sense.
Under this interpretation, according to Islamic law, a man is required to provide a separate household for each of his wives, a tradition that throughout the different periods of history more often than not made polygamy a privilege of the wealthy.
The Marriages of the Prophet Muhammad
There has been a strong emphasis on the Prophet Muhammad having had multiple wives as a means of justification and legitimization for the practice of polygamy, but as mentioned in the Qur’an, the standards of the prophet do not apply to all men and permission for the Prophet to contract specific types of marriage is given as “a privilege for [him] only, not for the (rest of) believers”( 33:50).
However, even Muhammad was forbidden “to take (other) women henceforth nor that [he] should change them for other wives even though their beauty pleased [him], save those whom [his] right hand possess.” (33:52)
Interestingly, the Prophet shared a monogamous relationship with his first wife Khadijah, and after her death, with the exception of A’ishah, the daughter of his closest friend Abu Bakr, all of his later marriages were used to either forge major political alliances or provide for the social welfare of widows.
That the custom of polygamy is still practiced in parts of the Muslim world today has more to do with prevailing social conditions, for nowhere in the Qur’an is there any reference to the sexual nature and needs of women or men with regards to polygamy. The Qur’an only speaks of the need to ensure social justice. While these restrictions placed on marriage may be seen as far from being socially just by modern standards, they would have been revolutionary in the context of seventh century Arabia.
Sources:
- Asghar A. Engineer. The Rights of Women in Islam (London: C. Hurst and Company, 1992).
- Muhammad M. Pickthall. The Meaning of the Glorious Qur’an: Text and Explanatory Translation, ed. Arafat K. El-Ashi (Maryland: Amana Publications, 1999).
- Fazlur Rahman. “Status of Women in the Qur’an,” Women and Revolution in Iran, ed. Guity Washat (Boulder: Westview Press, 1983).
- Amina Wadud. Qur’an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
- Wiebe Walther. Women in Islam (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishing, 1993).
