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Originally Posted by sally
i'm sure if i went off on the whole why it's permissable in islam reasoning, you would lose interest because it's been posted so many times on this forum.
marriage is big in islam. it's supported by lots of rulings and there is concrete and explicit commentary shedding light on the misfortune of the person who fails to live up to his or her duties. there are lots of obligations and bindings that come with the islamic marital contract. one of those is that a man is obligated to protect and provide for his wife. there is no way out of it. he's answerable to the Almighty for causing the slightest inconvenience due to failing to do his part. it's huge, no hanky panky business.
anyway, there's always a deeper reasoning behind why things are and arent the way they are. The Divine knows much more than you and i. there's no point denying that much. our brains are limited. but perhaps it is best understood this way: polygyny became permissable when women (daughters, wives, mothers) became fatherless/mahramless/sonless/husbandless...their kids without fathers or any other male guardians. it didn thelp that the majority of these women didnt have means of sustaining themselves financially.. and so, in order to provide these women with a solid means of support, polygyny became the norm? i mean, sure, a random man can provide for a random woman, but he can also drop out of the ballgame any time he wants. he has nothing binding him to his word. so then, that responsibility doesnt hold much weight for a woman who really needs permanent support to raise her kids and keep food on the table.
and hence, polygyny is not light on the man either. it's a test really. if it's hard for the woman, it's hard on the man too. it's sometimes impossible for a man to understand the nature of a woman completely. and then sometimes he might but he'll lack insight on the proper way to deal with her, etc. so imagine having to deal with more than one wife? providing for more than one wife, more than 2 kids, etc? oh yeah, and then you have to answer to Allah, dont forget. bummer.
don't know. the way things look right now (world food crises and what not) ...sounds like a lot for a man to handle. esp if you live in a third world country and aren't a politician or king or prince or ...doctor? ha ha.
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Well, sure. I've heard the case for polygyny from many different angles... I can even see how it would be, well charitable, if the rules of the society were severely patriarchal. And even if I don't see it as a divine practice, or even a 'natural' thing to do... if a man, and two or more women are into it then all power to them (although the kids' opinions I think count for something too, and they still wouldn't be taken into consideration)
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does it make you about as sick, or more, to think of a man seeking out another mans wife?
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No. I think what leaves me with the feeling is more to do with the guys who tell the girls to 'shut it' because it's their divinely sanctioned right to do so. It's almost the smug feeling coming off of them that irks me. Probably the fact that I can't find the right words to articulate it has as much to do with it.
A guy seeking out another's wife? Like actually going for her? That's just plain slimey and automatically fits into the more familiar 'detestable' category for me.