Several Muslim scholars say polygamy not endorsed by Islam
Several Muslim scholars say polygamy not endorsed by Islam
By Devi A. Asmarani
JAKARTA (JP): The day a woman finds out about the other woman
is when her world starts tumbling down. Yayuk's case ended
morbidly.
A devoted housewife and mother of three, her cycle of
happiness came to an end when she found out her husband had also
been happily married to another woman -- with whom he had
fathered two boys -- for the last seven years. Shocked, she fell
gravely ill for three weeks before her life ended in a hospital
bed.
For Ika, it was Yudha's sweet promises that made her fall into
a pseudo matrimonial trap. Yudha told her he had a troubled
marriage and said he would soon divorce his wife. They spent
intimate moments together and she later found out she was
pregnant.
Desperate, Ika agreed to marry Yudha without legitimate
documents, known here as an "unofficial marriage", with the hope
that someday he would divorce his wife and legally marry her.
There was no divorce, of course, and Ika was left with virtually
no legal rights to claim over a marriage unregistered and
unrecognized by the state.
There are elements of injustice, deception and hopelessness in
these two cases. The fact is most polygamous marriages cause
agony to at least one of the persons involved -- most often the
first wife.
The argument that defends the practice of polygamy, however,
is age-old and almost unchallenged: it is allowed by Islam, the
religion practiced by 90 percent of the nation. The practice, to
a certain degree, is not prohibited by the government.
But how can a religion that boasts of freeing the oppressed
from their societal shackles endorse this sort of injustice?
It doesn't, some Muslims now argue. They say identifying
polygamy with Islam is a misperception.
Musdah Mulia, a chief expert researcher at the Ministry of
Religious Affairs, says Islamic teachings are monogamous in
nature.
"It has been widely misperceived that Islam teaches polygamy,
when in fact polygamy is something that had been widely practiced
in Arabic society for thousands of years before Islam came
along," Musdah says.
"What the Prophet Muhammad did at the time was restrict the
number of wives a man can have from unlimited to as many as
four."
Musdah says there is only one verse on polygamy in the Koran,
and this verse during the Prophet Muhammad's life shocked Arab
men, many of whom had hundreds of wives at the time. So radical
was the change that some tribal leaders decided not to convert to
Islam because they just couldn't see being married to only four
wives.
Legislator Aisyah Hamid Baidlowi says that before Islam, women
had the lowest status in middle-eastern society. They were
saleable commodities to please men's sexual urges and were part
of an inheritance. When a man died, his son could inherit his
wife.
"Islam acknowledges that men have bigger sexual appetites than
women, and thus only restricts the number instead of prohibits
it," says Aisyah, who headed the Nahdlatul Ulama Muslimat, the
women's body of the country's largest Muslim organization, from
1995 until earlier this year.
Muslim scholar Komaruddin Hidayat says polygamy was allowed in
the context of helping widows and orphans of war casualties in
the days of the Prophet, a time which was rife with tribal and
civil wars.
"The interpretation of the verse has betrayed its spirit. The
spirit was about freeing people from oppression, but it became
something about domination over women," says Komaruddin, who
chairs the Paramadina Foundation.
The Koran cites that in a polygamous relationship, the man
must treat all of his wives fairly. Fairness here covers material
goods, love and sexual relations. But this, Aisyah says, is
almost impossible, for a normal human being anyway.
Nevertheless the men always claim that they treat their women
fairly, something Komaruddin deems improper: "The victim or the
women should be the one to say whether she is being treated
fairly."
"What it boils down to is that men who have more than one wife
are most certainly big liars who use the Koran's teachings to
their benefit," Aisyah says.
Such is why most polygamous marriages are either illegitimate
or unregistered. The Association of Indonesian Women for Justice
(LBH APIK) handles 400 cases of mistreatment of or discrimination
against women every year. About a fourth of these cases revolves
around extramarital relationships or polygamy, and in both cases,
one of the women involved is always deceived.
"Most men usually marry another woman without their wife's
consent," LBH APIK's coordinator for legal services Asni Friyanti
Damanik says.
According to the 1974 marriage law, a man must obtain the
consent of his first wife and the court before he marries another
woman. The law allows polygamy only under the conditions that the
first wife cannot perform her duties as a wife, is handicapped or
is terminally ill, or cannot bear a child.
Often the man obtains an identity card illegally by slightly
changing his full name and by stating he is single to make the
second wedding possible, Asni said.
Since permits from the legal wife and the court are hard to
obtain, many men resort to marriage that is legitimized only by a
Muslim cleric with the presence of two witnesses and is not
recognized by the state.
Government regulation No. 10, 1983 also requires civil
servants and government officials to have the consent from the
wife and his superior before practicing polygamy. Failure to do
so results in the loss of the job. Both laws, however, fail to
deter men from practicing polygamy.
"I don't deny that polygamy exists in Islam, but it has been
misunderstood. There needs to be reinterpretation on this issue,"
Musdah said.
One theory is that the Prophet's practice of polygamy was part
of missionary work.
Musdah said the Prophet was married to his first wife
Khadijah, who was 15 years older than he, for 28 years. After her
death, and in the last five years of his life during which he was
building a Muslim society in Medinah and surrounding areas, he
wedded 11 women, most of whom were older and widows of war
casualties.
"The Prophet needed solidarity support from the tribal groups
and an effective way to do this is through marriage," she said.
"This wasn't a normal time, it was the time of religious
proselytization."