Monday, September 01, 2008
Annals of Islamic law: Death for excessive polygamy!
I suspect that all the open-minded study in the world would not help me understand the reasoning behind this decision:
A Nigerian religious leader with 86 wives has accepted an Islamic decree ordering him to divorce all but four of them, local authorities say.
A spokesman for the emir of Bida told the BBC that Mohammadu Bello Abubakar, 84, agreed on Saturday to comply with the decree.
Last week one of Nigeria's top Islamic bodies, the Jamatu Nasril Islam, sentenced him to death.
The sentence was lifted but he was threatened with eviction from his home.
Earlier, Mr Abubakar had challenged Islamic scholars, saying there was no punishment stated in the Koran for having more than four wives.
"I have not contravened any established law that would warrant my being banished from the land... There is no law that says one must not marry more than four wives," the AFP news agency reported him as saying.
I understand that life is cheap in Africa and some countries administer the death penalty for a bad hairdo. I also support outlawing polygamy, so I suppose I can understand sentencing somebody to death for having too many wives. But I am fairly sure I do not understand the death penalty for having more than four wives. That strikes me as, well, asinine.
8 Comments:
By 
Whiskey, at
Mon Sep 01, 12:30:00 AM:
Let me explain this to you:
ANY deviation, particularly in the "excessive" wive territory, from the rules and regulations in the Koran that dictate in minute detail how Muslims must live, including the order in which they wash their hands and stuff like that ... is a threat to the whole thing.
Islam is just a bunch of rules. Muslims know little beyond it, nothing of the philosophy save "slave of Allah" and their faith is fragile as that of all slaves are.
Thus, DEATH for: apostasy, infidelity, eating pork, drinking booze, or too many wives. All Muslims have this tendency, syncretic Indonesia has Muslims beheading Catholic Schoolgirls, and "tolerant" Malaysia has laws against homosexual behavior that are draconian.
By 
, at
Mon Sep 01, 01:51:00 AM:
The right to have more than 4 wives was given exclusively to Muhammad by Allah. It is rather convenient how Allah's revelations always seemed to give Muhammad special privileges. I digress. Having more than 4 wives is a privilege reserved for apostles, and since Muhammad is the last apostle, you lose.
By Georg Felis, at
Mon Sep 01, 08:32:00 AM:
I don't know, I think the guy with 86 wives has suffered enough. That's at least 80 Mothers-in-Law.
By , at
Mon Sep 01, 10:43:00 AM:
It's a relief to know that muslims have SOME limits.....
By buck smith, at
Mon Sep 01, 10:51:00 AM:
I read this post and said to myself "there are gonna be some one-liners in the comments to this post. Georgefelis, yours is good enough that I won't try to top it.
By Dawnfire82, at
Mon Sep 01, 10:51:00 AM:
"The right to have more than 4 wives was given exclusively to Muhammad by Allah. "
Actually, the number of 4 wives was set because that's how many Muhammad had at any one time. He had a total of something like 9 wives throughout his life, but a number died or were divorced so that he had only 4 at once. Hence, the current limit.
I've always been a supporter of consensual polygamy. Aside from being an intrusion of the government into an essentially private matter, demographics dictate that there are more women than men in most societies because men die sooner. (from simple old age, warfare, violent crime, industrial accidents, et cetera) This gives a mathematical surplus of unmarried women.
If they don't mind sharing a male with another, why should the state give a damn?
By , at
Mon Sep 01, 12:31:00 PM:
Quran 4:3 establishes the limit of four wives for believers. Quran 33:50 establishes Muhammad's exclusive right to have more than 4 wives. Don't forget that any believer has the right to as many sex slaves ("those whom your right hand doth possess") as he can handle, in addition to his four wives.
By Dawnfire82, at
Mon Sep 01, 01:28:00 PM:
My memory is apparently fuzzy. I revisited the relevant texts. When the limit was established at 4, a special provision was for Muhammad to keep those that he already had, at 9. (most of which were political in nature, though a few seem to have been acts of mercy as well) But he could not (and did not) marry any more.
The theological explanation for this is that there was a provision in the Quran (33:53) forbidding remarriage for wives of the Prophet, and so forcing them to divorce Muhammad would have condemned them to a life of solitude. Secularist historians believe that the provision was included in order to guarantee the maintenance of the political alliances secured by those marriages.
I apologize for my mistake.
