Slate's Bizbox
faith-based: Religion, spirituality, and sacrilege.

What To Expect When You're Expecting a Co-WifeWhy American Muslims don't care to legalize polygamy.

By Andrea Useem
Posted Tuesday, July 24, 2007, at 12:12 PM ET

This article appears in conjunction with a special weeklong series on Islam published by On Faith, the Washington Post's religion blog. To read more, visit On Faith.

Illustration by Robert Neubecker. Click image to expand.

So, you're happily married to the Muslim man of your dreams when, suddenly, he drops the p-bomb: polygamy. For Aneesa Azeez, a 23-year-old Muslim convert and college graduate, her husband's announcement of his intention to marry a second wife devastated her. "I am shocked, hurt, angry and confused, all in one," she wrote in a letter to him.

Seems like a recipe for divorce, right? Polygamy is illegal, after all. But Azeez didn't play that card with her husband, 15 years her senior. Under the law that mattered to her—classical Islamic law—she accepted her husband's right to take up to four wives, as allowed by the Quran, as long as he could treat them equally.

At first, Azeez wrestled with jealousy toward her co-wife and pined for her husband on the nights and weekends he stayed with his second wife, who lived half an hour away. But eventually, a peacefulness settled in her heart and a friendship with her co-wife blossomed: "I am in polygyny because I want to be," she wrote on her blog, Polygynous Blessings, whose initial entries are collected in a self-published book of the same title. (Polygyny is the more precise term for the type of polygamy in which a man marries more than one wife.) Azeez's blog is just one of several in which American Muslims write thoughtful, sometimes wry, but usually positive commentary about living polygamously; other notables include Thoughts of a First Wife and Big Faith.

Azeez, who works from her home in upstate New York as a newspaper copy editor, could be a poster child in the movement to legalize polygamy—the Muslim equivalent of the poignantly normal gay and lesbian couples lining up outside San Francisco's City Hall in 2004. But she won't be marching in the streets, calling for the legalization of polygamy, as some Protestant and ex-Mormon polygamists have been doing. For the tiny minority of American Muslims who engage in polygamy, its illegality is close to irrelevant. And for mainstream American Muslims, who are dealing with enough negative publicity as it is, let alone the fact that polygamy gives many of them the heebie-jeebies, the legal status quo suits them just fine.

So, while the existence of Azeez's book, which had sold 150 copies as of mid-July, won't necessarily prompt the Department of Homeland Monogamy to raise its threat level to yellow, American Muslim polygamists are still a group to watch.

For one thing, they may be almost as numerous as the fundamentalist Mormons who make all the headlines (and score big ratings for HBO). Debra Mubashshir Majeed, a religious studies professor at Beloit College who is researching a book on American Muslim polygamy, estimates that less than 1 percent of American Muslims indulge in the practice—and these practitioners are most often African-American Muslims or recent immigrants from West Africa. That percentage may seem infinitesimal, given that the most recent estimate of the American Muslim population puts their numbers at 2.35 million, but it does mean there are perhaps as many as 20,000 American Muslim polygamists. In comparison, the current best guess about the number of fundamentalist Mormons involved in polygamy in the United States, Mexico, and Canada is only 37,500, according to Brooke Adams, who covers the polygamy beat at the Salt Lake Tribune. (Yes, polygamy has its own beat—in Utah, at least.) And while Muslim polygamists are quiet now, their political awareness may grow over time; after all, fundamentalist Mormon polygamists lived for decades in disparate and secretive communities, only recently emerging to claim their place at the civic table.

American Muslim polygamists are unafraid of prosecution, and they sometimes seem almost puzzlingly unconcerned with the illegality of their conjugal life. Azeez takes only minor steps to conceal her husband's identity, and only then to ensure his job is not jeopardized. "It's not like everyone is being rounded up and thrown in jail," she says—in stark contrast to fundamentalist Mormons who recall the raid of the Short Creek, Ariz., polygamist community in 1953. Similarly, Senegalese-American hip-hop star Akon casually revealed to a New York radio host in late 2006 that he not only had four mothers growing up but also currently has several wives at home in Atlanta. (He said he would go public with his "multimonogamous" family only if he had his own reality show. Just imagine it: Big Love meets Run's House.)

And prominent American Imam Siraj Wahhaj, who was the first Muslim cleric to ever offer the invocation at the U.S. House of Representatives, was quoted in Paul Barrett's 2007 book American Islam* as saying that he performs polygamous unions at his Al-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn, N.Y. "If a man can have a hundred girlfriends, and it's legal, I don't say you can't have more than one wife," he reasons. Of course, Wahhaj is in the minority on this point; most mainstream imams would not condone the open flouting of the law. Tahir Anwar, imam of a well-established San Jose, Calif., mosque, writes in an e-mail that he would discourage any Muslims seeking a polygamous marriage and would not perform the ceremony: "It is not allowed in the land that we live in, a land to whom we have promised that we will follow all of its laws."

This idea that Muslims are contractually bound to follow the laws of the country in which they live—an idea rooted in the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed—is theologically sound, but only up to a point. It presumes that the laws of the land are immutable. It presumes that America is not, in fact, a place where a motivated group of individuals can mobilize others to change laws and social mores.

So, why aren't all American Muslim leaders jumping on the "legalize polygamy" bandwagon? After all, Muslim parents have banded together to call for public schools to recognize Muslim holidays, and Muslim cabdrivers are trying to protect their right to refuse alcohol-carrying passengers; shouldn't American Muslim leaders step in to secure the rights of their co-religionists to exercise their marital preferences?

As urban anthropologist Robert Dannin points out in his 2002 ethnography, Black Pilgrimage to Islam, some of the most intense and divisive feelings about polygamy are found within the Muslim community itself. Many Muslim women, of course, are frankly relieved that the law of the land forbids husbands from taking multiple wives. But Muslim religious leaders, who are by definition male, may have slightly different motivations in accepting the legal status quo. At a moment when leading presidential candidates can suggest the routine wiretapping of mosques and nearly half of the American public has a negative view of Islam, championing polygamy hardly seems like a winning strategy.

Back in 1890, when the federal government was preparing to dissolve the Mormon church, confiscate its property, and possibly even disenfranchise all its members in large part because of polygamy, the church's then-president, Wilford Woodruff, publicly declared his advice to all Latter-Day Saints to "refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land." Although American Muslim leaders have not been backed into such an uncomfortable corner, they are quietly issuing their own 1890 manifesto: consenting to theological accommodation as a price of American belonging.

Correction, July 25, 2007: This article originally misstated the release date of American Islam, by Paul M. Barrett. It was released in 2007. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
Andrea Useem is a freelance religion writer and editor. Her Web site is www.ReligionWriter.com.
Illustration by Robert Neubecker.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES

Remarks from the Fray:

One might assume that anti-bigamy laws would rule out plural marriages, but I don't think it's necessarily so, at least these days. Numerous religious groups--the Unitarian-Universalists, for instance--perform marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples, and although most states don't recognize these unions, it's not illegal to enter into them. What would be different about polygynous or polyandrous marriages, outside of those small towns in which it is illegal for unmarried couples to cohabit? I don't know of anyone being prosecuted for adultery recently, even where those laws are still on the books, and a married man who fathers a child with a woman not his wife is still, as far as I know, liable for child support.

Why couldn't a couple, Muslim or otherwise, marry legally, then add a second wife to the marriage in a religious, civilly non-binding ceremony, and arrange among themselves through contractual means to safeguard her interests and those of any children she may subsequently have? As long as the second marriage doesn't purport to be a civil marriage as well as a religious one--and as long as the applicable state constitution doesn't contain any amendments intended to prevent any such legal maneuvers--wouldn't a polygynous or polyandrous marriage be legal in most jurisdictions, at least in the sense that no one would go to jail for being in one?

--cociyo

(To reply, click here.)

The suggestion that Muslims might attempt to make polygyny a mainstream issue akin to Mormon attempts is a bit sensationalized. The idea of polygyny in Islam will most likely remain a backroom issue, mainly due to the fact that polygyny is not a religious duty in comparison to, say, Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which holds it a duty to have more than one wife.

In Islam, the only thing religiously mandated about polygyny is that there is a limit. There is no religious bearing or judgment as to whether a Muslim has one, or more wives. As such, the issue then becomes one of how writers want to portray it. This particular issue implies that we as Americans better watch out for those dangerous Muslims who want to turn this country into a harem. Chicken Little would be proud.

--tajuddin

(To reply, click here.)

Car insurance companies hire statisticians. Those statisticians have found that indeed, young men are reckless. They have also found that once those young men are married, literally, "settled down" they become less reckless as now they must be providers. In general, wives keep their husbands in line and out of trouble.

What does polygamy do? Imagine a population of 50 men and 50 women. Where each man will take 2 wives if he can. Well, you will potentially have 25 men with 2 wives apiece, and 25 single men. And those 25 single men will be society's worst nightmare: reckless, criminal, irresponsible.

Monogamy is the foundation of modern civilization. A wife to control all men, a father to control all children. Children without fathers and men without wives, will be the downfall of any civilization.

--Madai

(To reply, click here.)

As Muslims we are bound to contracts, ie. we have to respect contracts. When we're citizens/residents of a country, we are bound by a tacit contract that implies that we will respect the laws of the country. So what Ms. Azeez is doing is not only illegal according to US law, but also according to Islamic law.

Personally, I believe that Muslims who practice polygyny, breaking the laws of the country, are an embarrassment to our community. In addition, I find it quite problematic that Muslim men who had agreed previously not to take anymore wives, just come one day to the house and say they have taken other wives, without consulting the first wife at all. How is this being kind to your wife? I am really perplexed by our community's double discourse, where on one hand "women are held in high esteem and very respected in Islam", and on the other your husband can just flirt with a woman, "fall in love" with her and then just make her a "second wife", many times without the wife's knowledge.

I believe polygyny should be legalized so it can be regulated, more than anything. And if people out of their free will want to take more wives then it's up to them.

--Caminante

(To reply, click here.)

(7/27)

Washington Post