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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books An Introduction To The Rights And Duties Of Women In Islam Islam and Polygamy Islam allows polygamy and permits men, under specific circumstances, to have at most four wives at any given time. Polygamy was customary before Islam and was not abrogated with the coming of Islam; instead, Islam has corrected and set various conditions for the practice. The principle was permitted, but polygamy was limited to four wives.

In authorizing polygamy, Islam does not have the intention of siding with men and encouraging them to form harems or overindulge in sexual desires and debauchery or to overlook the rights of women and oppress them. Rather, Islam’s aim is to uphold a range of women’s natural rights—the right to marriage, forming a family, and having and rearing legitimate children. Of course, the rights of men have also been kept in mind.

The permitting of polygamy, while observing prescribed conditions, is a social necessity and in the ultimate interests of both women and men and in order to elucidate this matter, the following two premises are indicated. First premise: Even though female births are not more than that of males, statistics show that the number of women who are available for marriage is often more than men.

There are two reasons for this: First, the fatalities of men, especially young men, exceed fatalities of girls and women. This becomes evident by referring to the casualties of incidents such as war, falling from heights, getting buried under debris, drowning, mine and industry mortalities, car accidents, work related accidents, etc. Because of these accidents, which are not few, the equilibrium between men and women is lost and the ratio of women to men increases.

This is evident in the human casualties of recent wars, such as the wars of Iraq and Iran, America and Iraq, Russia and Afghanistan and their internal wars, Serbia and Bosnia, and other wars and acts of aggression that occur all over the globe. The human death toll in these battles is monstrously high and the majority of deaths concerns men and youths that either had not married or had married recently before their demise. Now consider the increase of women over men as a result of these wars.

Second, some scientists hold that women’s resistance to diseases is higher than that of men. Studies of the deaths of children, adolescents, and young adults affirm this theory. The average lifespan of women is longer than men.