For a long time, polygamy has been one of the things that I disliked about Islam. The idea of having more than a woman sharing the same man used to be repulsive to me. I used to believe that it is kind of unfair for women to be put in such situation. When they used to challenge me with the argument that it is their choice to make, I used to ignore the idea, dismissing that any woman would really chose to share her husband and be happy in that.
The polygamy right that is given only for men in Islam rather that to women as well does also make it look worse, but that is understandable where this right were given at a time DNA wasn’t discovered and thus hard to figure out the biological father of a baby.
In the other hand, Christianity does prohibit polygamy, and while it does sound fair for people prefer monygamy relationships, in truth, it does eat from the right of a person to choose foe those who would prefer polygamous relationship. Unfortunatly, in some western countries where they claim to have the optimum social freedoms, you would still find laws that deny the right of how many partners one would choose for a long time relationship – aka marriage.
While some social situations may neccitate polygamous relationship, like at the times of wars, where a lot of men end up dead and the ratio of single women gets drastically up where they find themselve unhappily consenting for such relationship for the lack of a better option, and which is rarely the case in our modern world. Sometimes there are other elements such as personal sexuality where there are in fact many bi-sexual people who would really desire to have long term partners with both sexes.
I know that opening the door for polygamous relationships for both sexs would be kind of threat to the family structure that we know it today, and I do understand how such relationships would be even harder to maintan for a two people relationships hardly sustains these days, but if we are to talk about human rights, then chosing how many partners one would like to live with should definatly be listed.
For a country like Jordan, this polygamy privilage is restricted on Muslim men, which is fair for people believing in a certain religion, but if we are to allow such polygamous marriages while maintaining equality for all people regardless of their religion and in which the Jordanian constitution guarantees, then we ought to offer the same right for non-Muslim people whether they are men or women and who desire to have a polygamous relationship under a civil marriage law (Is un-religious marriages legal in Jordan? – civil marriages).
Fadi Zaghmout فادي زغموت 
What a Total B.S
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Observer,I do agree with you, as much as I despise polygamy in the religious sense, that people should have the choice to do so. I do also agree with you when you say that if it is legal for men, it should be legalized for women. However, to argue using war, or to say that whole DNA &@#$$, just doesn’t make sense to me. This whole a3rad wa ansab talk leads to this heightened sense of fake honor, which you yourself talked about in older posts.“While some social situations may necessitate polygamous relationship” Necessitate???? Seriously????? Polygamy is a choice, and not a necessity, and like all choices, it should not be exclusive to one sex and not the other!Whatever weak logic men in our society use to explain the “need” for polygamy, or to be more gender specific “ta3addod al zawjat” does not make sense, at least not to me.The argument that I think should be used here – which to my understanding Mormons have used in the United States in attempts to legalize polygamy, and which to an extent is what is stopping Homosexual marriages from being legalized in the US – is that with Homosexual marriages being legalized, the family structure in its traditional sense of husband, wife and children will no longer apply, and other forms of family need be considered.
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Polygamy indeed should be a protected right for humans. I think that this issue should be specified at the time of marriage.Some people prefer to have the monogamy. And we cannot deny people their right to monogamy, just as much as we can’t deny them the right to polygamy.So as I said, the polygamy\monogamy should be specified at the time of marriage. So maybe next time two people get married, they both are asked whether or not polygamy is acceptable, and then they reach a consensus on their type of marriage.
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This is a bigger issue than polygamy. It has to do more with what family do you want to have. While it’s important to try keep the government away from people’s personal lives especially their bedrooms, we have to realize how will kids be affected being raised by parents who are polygamists. It won’t be easy and how the whole concept of a family will change. This will tremendously affect the society.
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My friend, the observer, the family has passed in many states all over the centuries. First there were women played the leading role in the family (the matriarchy) and that was because they produced the way of production the humans.There are type of families where women are married to many men.After this and with the development of hunting men begin to play the leading role and the way of family changed so we went to another kind of families where a man had many women and after this we arrived in our modern type of monogamy.The time scale that i am speaking about is centuries not years, i mean you must see in an anthropological way starting from the early prehistoric ages until now. You may find more information on this:http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Engels_The_Origin_of_the_Family_Private_Property_and_the_Stat.pdf
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this is the link:http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Engels_The_Origin_of_the_Family_Private_Property_and_the_Stat.pdf
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fawzi, but one would like to know who is his biological father, no? It is a human right, no?As for war, maybe the word necessitate is a bit strong her, but the point has some validity because some women would prefer sharing over not having any man, no?Do you think a more polygamous societies would be more accepted towards homosexual marriage? due to the fact that they do have different forms of families? DM, this is a good idea, but I was thinking of having the marriage itself started with more than two people. hareega, I think that what is mostly important for kids is love, regardless of how many parents they have or the sex of their paretns. We would just need sometime to adjust.jmay, thanks for the information, yes I know some part of that although it was away of my mind when I wrote the post. I guess now families should evolve to respect the rights of individual choices.
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In this article, Jaques Attali has a very interesting take on monogamy, and how it will eventually cease to exist! http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3170
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fawzi, interesting read. I am not sure about simultanuous love, jealousy would be a big obstacle then. Anyway, people are different, and they change with time, who knows!
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Knowing who the biological father is would be great, but it is not necessarily a “right”. I would like to bring up sperm banks and artificial insemination here, these kids grow up never knowing who the father is and women who conceive this way do it knowing that their children are never to know who the biological father is. This in my opinion does not make this practice wrong. The only reasonable argument here would be that it is important to know who the biological father is for medical history, and i wouldn’t be surprised if sperm banks already provide that.As for accepting homosexual marriages, a polygamous society would not necessarily be more accepting to homosexual marriages, but it would be harder to argue against homosexual marriages in a society that allows families with several dads or moms. As for women preferring to share over not having a man, if the situation was to be reversed, would a man agree to do the same thing? i.e share a woman with another man rather than remain without a woman? I don’t think so! I think that this idea spawns from the fact that in our societies and the global general outlook on the male and female roles in a family dictate that it is imperative for a woman to have a man in her life.
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fawzi, I think that some men would share if they are to choose between a no woman and a shared one. As for knowing the biological father, yes, I agree it is a matter of opinions. I consider it a human right where every human are entitled to know who is his biological father. I guess that sperm banks should not be allowed to take donated sperms from anonymous men, and they should provide a certificate with the name of the man and his address written on it. Born children through this process should have the means to locate the biological father if they want to.You are right about polygamous societies and homosexuality. They may not be more tolrante to homosexual marriages but they can’t argue about a certain definition of a family as well.
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