Polygamy because of war
Mu' meneen Brothers
and Sisters,
As Salaam Aleikum wa
Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh. (May Allah's Peace, Mercy and Blessings be
upon all of you)
One of our
brothers/sisters has asked this question:
why we don't accept the fact that this was because of the societal need at that time. war and travel in addition to the less survival of the men made such, polygamy a factor in establishing stability to the society.
(There may be some grammatical and spelling errors in the above
statement. The forum does not change anything from questions, comments and
statements received from our readers for circulation in confidentiality.)
Answer:
In the name of Allah, We praise
Him, seek His help and ask for His forgiveness. Whoever Allah guides none can
misguide, and whoever He allows to fall astray, none can guide them aright. We
bear witness that there is no one (no idol,
no person, no grave, no prophet, no imam,
no dai, nobody!) worthy of
worship but Allah Alone, and we bear witness that Muhammad(saws) is His
slave-servant and the seal of His Messengers.
My beloved brother,
firstly, it is not a ‘fact’ that
polygamy was practiced and allowed in Islam because of the societal needs at
the time of the Revelation of the Quran!
Secondly, Allah did not ‘command’ the believing men to practice
polygamy; He only gave ‘permission’ to the believing men to practice
polygamy, if they wished to do so.
And there is a big difference
between a command and a permission!
The believing men are given permission by Allah Subhanah to eat of all
the halaal foods; but that does not
mean that a believer ‘must’ eat each and every halaal food! The believers are given permission, so they may eat of the halaal foods if they
wish to do so. Similarly, if one wishes to marry more than one woman
upto a maximum of four, he has been
given permission by Allah Subhanah to do so.
Besides, Islam did not start the practice of
polygamy! It was a practice that has
been practiced since time immemorial!
Islam, in fact, put a limit to the number of wives a
believing man may keep at one time to a maximum of four.
It is indeed a widely held notion that Islam ‘introduced’ the concept of polygamy because of the societal needs at the time of the Revelation of the Quran; but there is absolutely no truth to this notion. At the time of the Messenger of Allah (saws), most men had in excess of four wives in keeping with tradition and culture. When the verse of Surah Nisaa was revealed in Medina limiting the maximum number of wives for a believing man to four, many believers who had wives in excess of four had to divorce them. Thus, the notion that because men used to die in battles, and thus Islam allowed the practice of polygamy only to marry the excess women to stabilize the imbalance is absolutely baseless and illogical.
No religion in the world has a
ceiling in their texts to the number of wives one may keep at any one
time, except Islam; and no religion in the world has guided their
followers to keep only ‘one’ wife, if
they wished to do so, except
Islam!
Whatever written of Truth and
benefit is only due to Allah’s Assistance and Guidance, and whatever of error
is of me. Allah Alone Knows Best and He
is the Only Source of Strength.
Your Brother in
Islam,
