Polygamy Survival Guide Dhakiyya Umm Ruqayya presents a practical guide for how to make polygamy work, drawn from personal experience. Polygamy is often seen as the end of a happy marriage, but it need not be that at all. Take it from me, I’m a happily married first wife and I’m friends with my co-wife, masha Allah; in fact she’s sitting in the same room as me as I’m typing this. Polygamy can work if the husband and both or all wives go about it in the right way. I have heard many horror stories about polygamy gone very wrong, and in all those cases, at least one person in the marriage was not following the Qur’an and Sunnah, usually the husband. Polygamy requires us to adhere to everything that Allah (SWT) has taught us about marriage, and to follow the example of Muhammad (SAW) and his wives (RA). This is the foundation upon which any marriage, monogamous or polygamous, is built, but with polygamy, it’s even more critical. Without this foundation, it isn’t going to succeed. While polygamy is frequently seen as benefiting the husband to the detriment of the wives, the reality is that it’s far more difficult for the husband. He has to not only fulfil the rights of both wives and support both families financially and emotionally, he has to juggle his time between them, settle any disputes and difficulties that arise, and all the while ensure that he’s being just and fair. The penalty for him failing to treat his wives equally is being raised up on the day of Judgement with half his body paralysed. The Qur’an strongly warns men that if they can’t be just between their wives, they are truly better off with only one. For men that take Islam seriously, polygamy is a huge and weighty responsibility and it’s an arduous task to get it right. Meanwhile, each wife has no more responsibility than a monogamously married wife, and in some cases (e.g. where the wives choose to share accommodation) they can end up with a lot less responsibility than monogamous wives, as they share the running of the household and help each other out with the children. Continued...
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 19:03:12 +0000