The quote was stated by Shahadeh Abu Arrar from Israel. He has 67 children and 8 wifes. Now, Abu is thinking about remarrying with a 9th wife.
You see, I am okay with polygamy as long as the wifes like their lives and the children aren't being forced to do anything sexually. I do not agree with the practice but I do realize there are some polygamists out there who love their lives. Some polygamist children are happy with their mothers or fathers.
At the same time, men like Abu really piss me off when they look down at women as if we're a bunch of idiots. I cannot blame them totally because their culture taught them so. This is the reason why many activists are urging for literacy and education among women in Bedouin community that allows Muslims men to have multiple wives. I agree that this should be done. If anyone is a Muslim and can share their thought on this, it would be really helpful.
I wonder if polygamists really love each other or is it something that they "have" to do in order to survive. Is it done by arrange marriage mostly or do the participates volunteer themselves? If polygamists are living among us, how can they hiding themselves? Perhaps I should go watch the polygamy television series that were aired on HBO (or was it Showtime?)
While I was reading the article about Abu, another point occurred to me. If a man with many wifes like Abu marry one woman at a time...and then divorce them later except for the latest one, does that count as polygamy? Or does polygamy counts only if a man, a lot of women and a lot of children live together in a house? I want to understand the concept of it. But people are not talking about it at all.
Here is an article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071016/ap_on_fe_st/israel_dad_s67_kids;_ylt...
I think it only counts as polygamy when they're actually married to more than one person at the time.
I agree that literacy is VERY important for women in the Middle East. I intend on getting a B.A. in English and eventually a Master's and it's one of my interests to teach ESL. I think it would be cool, personally, to go to a Bedouin community and teach the women to read and write, whether in Arabic or English.
came to be accepted and a part of the religion. I am going to use a book as reference..that is where my quotes are from. It is called "Islam Today" by Akbar S. Ahmed who is a professor of International Relations at American University in Washington.
Let's look at this historically-- This religion is 1400 years old, relatively young, I know
The prophet himself had many wives. You want exact number? 12...not all at the same time, At different points of his life.. Some died, and some cohabited with his other wives. His first wife was 15 years his elder and he lived with her monogamously until her death. After her death, in the period of many wars and battles between people of Arabia, "wars produced many widows. They would come to him in desperate states." ----"the prophet contracted 12 in all. Most of his wives were between the age of forty and fifty, divorced, often more than once, and had offspring by previous spouses when the prophet married them."--
this is to explain the Prophet's marriages --"The marriages provided the women with pious and sheltered lives in the simple household of the Prophet.....It is the prophet's treatment of his wives-with fairness, gentleness, and respect-that has laid the basis of treatment of women in Islam" BY the way, Four is the number of wives a man can have but only in certain circumstances
ON POLYGAMY I will also give you this excerpt out of this book found on page 152, because the Professor explains it better than I ever could:
There is another idea about family life that is difficult to lay to rest in the West. It is of Islam as a man's paradise with every man posessing at least four wives. This is, of course, a stereotype and not a real image. IN my anthropological fieldwork in Pakistan which cast a wide net over an entire section of a major tribal group, I discovered that only 0.02 percent of men were polygamous. Personally too, apart from one or two people in the older generation, I know of no friend or acquaintance who has more than one wife.
IN Islam it is always important to look at the spirit behind the word or law, whether it is in criminal punishmnet or polygamy. The fact that a man is allowed in EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES to marry up to four wives must be seen in this context. It is quite clear that the IDEAL IS ONE WIFE and the Quran emphasizes and indeed advocates it. However there are situations in times of war, famine or social upheavel when it is better that a woman is safely and honorably married than has to fend for herself as a destitute or prostitute her body. It is therefore, the spirit that must be understood and not the letter of the law.
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AH, If you need further explanation and clarification- just ask but i think that the quotes from the book explain polygamy and why and how it is accepted only in extraordinary circmumstances, I am from Pakistan and I don't know of anyone from my extended family and large number of friends who has more than one wife.
"I leave my one and only grain of spiritual sand
to universal scales of humanity, all humanity...
forever is finding a solution to a solution." -Forever Begins, Common
http://www.progressiveu.org/231615-this-is-a-muslim-girls-plight
Oh wow, thank you for the explanation. It cleared many things up for me. If I understand your last paragraph correctly, it wouldn't be alright for a man to have multiple wives unless the women are in trouble financially, correct? So some men can be considered as generous. But they eventually take advantage of the women anyway right? Or is it that women give themselves away to those men as a thank you?
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http://www.mylot.com/?ref=truelife
and the song she and Christina Aguliera did
it said if a guy has 2 girls than he's the man
if a girl does the same then she's a whore
if a woman said oh every nite i chose a man to sleep with, then there wuld be an outrage. She'd be called a whore and possibly threatened and people would say that she pulls down woman everywhere
there is no justification for polygamy