ELDER OF ZIYON: How Muslim co-wives feel

From Now Lebanon:

Imagine you're a woman. Imagine you fall in love with a man, or at least, like him, or merely consider him as a potential husband. Imagine he asks to marry you, and you (or your parents, depending on the context), say yes. You move in together, you bear him two or three or five children, you wash his dirty socks and cook for him and serve him and try to be the best wife there is. Because that's what a 'good' wife does.

Now imagine that after a few years of doing that, all of that, your beloved husband, who is financially at ease, decides to get himself a new wife. Just like someone would get a new car. He doesn't divorce you. No. It is much worse than that. He wants to keep you both. And now you have to share him with another woman. You hate the guts of that other woman, and she hates your guts too. But you are forced to live together. If you are lucky enough, he would build a new floor for her on top of the one where you reside. And you wouldn't need to see her constantly gloating in your face. But every night, as he comes back from work, you would hear his footsteps on the stairs, going past your door and up to spend the night with her, to eat her food, to sleep in her bed — the younger, fresher, prettier wife — and you'd wish your heart would stop beating right there right now, because you can't take the pain anymore. But then you do take it, day after day, and you learn to become numb. And your only moment of glory or vengeance would happen the day wife number three arrives, along with the third floor on top of the previous two. That's when the one who replaced you finally learns what it means to be cast aside like a useless mop, a dirty mop full of holes that is forgotten in some corner of the cupboard under the kitchen sink...

This is not some imaginary scenario. It is the reality of many women in Lebanon and other Arab countries. The sad case of the Lebanese woman who recently committed suicide because her husband decided to take up a second wife is but one example of many stories that do not make it to the media. ...

You see, the prophet allowed Muslim men four wives on the condition they are able to do them justice: "Marry of the women, who seem good to you, two or three or four; and if ye fear that ye cannot do justice (to so many) then one (only) or (the captives) that your right hands possess." (Qur'an 4:3). Yet the concept of "justice" here, as interpreted in numerous Hadith (like Bukhari's), means specifically being able to provide for the four wives financially. There is no taking into account the emotional or physical needs of the wives, or their human right to be treated fairly. They are properties. As long as you can guarantee the "maintenance" of your properties, you are welcome to "acquire" more.

One long-lasting pretext to justify polygamy is the strong libido of some men, for whom one wife is not enough. So they marry more than one woman in order to avoid "committing adultery": what a genius way to make adultery itself Halal....

In the meantime, many Arab husbands will keep on buying themselves new wives, as long as Allah is the dealer and he is such an excellent salesman.

ELDER OF ZIYON: 60% of Saudi men financially exploit their wives

From Al Arabiya:

A Saudi Arabian social researcher claims through his research that 60 percent of Saudi Arabian husbands financially exploit their wives’ money, the London-based Asharq al-Awsat reported on Friday.

Dr. Mahmoud Kisnawi from Univeristy of Umm al-Qura concentrated mainly on working wives, and said wives allow their husbands to take advantage of their salaries under the pretence of “ensuring family stability,” despite Islam giving women the legal and religious right to have her own complete salary.

Dr. Kisnawi told Asharq al-Awsat that 60 percent of husbands use their wives salaries to enter the real estate market or complete the construction of a home, without taking into consideration the needs and desires of their wives. He added that this phenomenon contributed to the increase in divorce rates in Saudi Arabia.

"In some cases, husbands have demanded that their wives provide them with large amounts of money so that they can complete the construction of their home. However these husbands may be deceiving their wives and want to complete construction in order to marry a second wife, with this [second] wife living in the home bought by the first wife's salary.”

This daunting reality lived by some Saudi Arabian women caused some psychological trauma to these women, Dr. Kisnawi said, adding “this will make women lose trust in the sanctity of marriage, and as a result they would [therefore] seek separation and divorce."

Maha Yousef, who was a working wife, told the newspaper that the issue of husbands financially exploiting their wives salaries is today a major reason for divorce in Saudi Arabia. Maha ended up divorcing her husband after 25 years in marriage, when her husband decided to marry a second wife after he exploited her money.

"After he finished financially exploiting me, and the house was built, he decided to marry a second wife, and for this second wife to live in the house that I spent my life working to finance," she said, adding "this caused me emotional and psychological trauma, and I saw that divorce was the only solution that would end this crisis, and return a portion of my dignity which was ripped away by the father of my children."

As for the Islamic jurisprudential view of this issue, Sheikh Mohamed al-Nujaimi, a member of the International Fiqh Academy, said that the majority of Muslim scholars believed that a wife has complete freedom to utilize the money and property in her name as she liked, without needing the consent of her husband.