Dear Hadi,
In Islam, we allow multiple wives for men.
With the sex ratio almost 1:1 and if one man gets two women it means another man has zero, so for every man with 2 wives, 1 remains wifeless.
What do you think happens to this set of gentlemen?
What can we as a community do to serve these people to reduce the plight of the wifeless men and the innocent women in polygamist relationships with single husbands? (asking as a Muslim woman in a polygamist relationship)
Dear Concerned about Polygamy,
Thank you for your question.
We have answered this question in detail previously. You can read it by clicking on First Wife.
For all the reasons we list there,
- Illegality in the U.S.
- Inability to treat multiple wives equally
- Misinterpretation and misapplication of the relevant Quranic verses,
Our best advice is quite simple.
In this day and age, at least in the United States, Muslim men should not marry more than one woman at the same time.
In fact, we think the actual marriage ratio problem facing Muslims in the West is that many Muslim men are marrying non-Muslim women and ignoring their social obligation towards the Muslim community.
For a more detailed discussion of this issue, please look at our answer to a related question previously asked by Midwestern Muslimah.
In peace.