Polygamy
... exhorting the believers to practice polygamy, or that polygamy is considered as an ideal. The Quran doesn’t give men the blanket right to have more than one wife, and that it’s clear from this quranic verse on polygamy: "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 only one" (Al-Nisa’, 4:3). Also, a subsequent verse states: "You are never able to be fair and just between women even if that were your ardent desire." (Al-Nisa', 4:129). In short, Islam as a universal religion suitable for all places and all times could not ignore the compelling social and moral reasons for polygamy. In most human societies, females outnumber males. For example, in the U.S there are, at least, eight million more women than men. In a country like Guinea there are 122 females for every 100 males. Therefore, some ideologist might suggest celibacy, and others may think that the society should tolerate all manners of sexual permissiveness as prostitution, sex out of wedlock, homosexuality, etc. In contrary, other societies, like most African societies, wander to allow polygamous marriage as a cultural accepted and respected institution. A bishop of the Anglican Church in Kenya declared that, "Although monogamy may be ideal for the expression of love between husband and wife, the church should consider that in certain cultures polygyny is socially acceptable and that the belief that polygyny is contrary to Christianity is no longer tenable."1 In addition, the polygamy, under certain circumstances, has a valuable function, although it has been abused in some times and some places. The most obvious example of this occurs in times of war when there are a large numbers of widows and girls whose fiancés and husbands have been killed in the fighting. For example, after the Second World War, there were 7,300,000 more women than men in Germany (3.3 million of them were widows) 2. Many of these women needed a man not only as a companion but also as a provider for the household in a time of hardship. The soldiers of the victorious Allied Armies exploited these women's vulnerability. Many American and British soldiers paid for their pleasures in cigarettes, chocolate, and bread. Moreover some participants in an international youth conference held ...