Answer to your comment.../ Siddiqui 2004-04-12 15:49:30
No, does not really show you as an intelligent person. Intelligence is shown by a couple of lines someone writes...Topic here was of Muslims you brought in Hindu's, Indians, Female population, celibacy etc etc...You are trying to prove a point which is not done in an efficient way..You might know a lot read a lot but being concise and to the point does not seem to be one of your virtues!! I do not get intimidated by phanatics rather you seem to be the one who is intimidated....Muslims are known to do die for religion..There is enough history to prove that and you are proving also by writing essays in the comments as to how easy it is to prove people like you!!!
Angry?/ Khadeja 2004-04-10 16:48:22
Yes I do know a lot and that is why when I comment I comment intelligently. I am not angy and I think you felt so because my thoughts about the issue intimidated you.Remember one thing Sire everyone exploits everything given to them for their better life. Every religion every tradition had its own set people who never followed what their religion asked them. If all of us were following half the religion we are taught, our world would be a better place.
Aggitated.../ Coold down Maa'm 2004-04-09 16:02:54
Man you really can get agitated...You seem to be a muslim phanatic...Kudos to you and your likewise...Seems like no one can argue with a person like you who claims to know about all the religions in the world!!!
You have no other work then to do research....Keep it up...Maybe you can teach the world about Islam...What you have written is all age old news..Everyone knows how muslims exploit the polygammy issue..Say "Talaq" thrice and you are done...Anyway no use writing to you you seem aggravated enough!! Keep up the anger! Whew pity the people around you...
/ Khadeja Kausar 2004-04-09 12:52:33
American way of life does not represent Christianity, Israels way of life does not fully justify Judaism. Understanding of Islam should come from Quran rather than Talibaan or Saudi Arabia.
I wanted to comment on polygamy because it is not really explained in the article (I guess it was not required but some morons really need those holes to fill in their dirty ideas)
1. Definition of Polygamy Polygamy means a system of marriage whereby one person has more than one spouse. Polygamy can be of two types. One is polygyny where a man marries more than one woman, and the other is polyandry, where a woman marries more than one man. In Islam, limited polygyny is permitted and polyandry is completely prohibited. Now coming to the original question, why is a man allowed to have more than one wife?
2. Qur'an is the only religious scripture in the world that says 'marry only one' Qur'an is the only religious book, on the face of this earth, that contains the phrase 'marry only one'. There is no other religious book that instructs men to have only one wife. In none of the religious scriptures like the Vedas, the Ramayan, the Mahabharat, the Geeta or the Bible does one find a restriction on the number of wives. According to these scriptures one can marry as many as one wishes. It was only later, that the Hindu priests and the Christian Church restricted the number of wives to one.
Many Hindu religious personalities, according to their scriptures, had multiple wives. King Dashrat, the father of Rama, had more than one wife. Krishna had several wives. In earlier times, Christian men were permitted as many wives as they wished, since the Bible puts no restriction on the number of wives. It was only a couple of centuries ago that the Church restricted the number of wives to one.
Polygyny is permitted in Judaism. According to Talmudic law, Abraham had 2 wives, and Solomon had hundreds of wives. The practice of polygyny continued till Rabbi Gershom ben Yehudah. (960 A.D to 1030 A.D) issued an edict against it. The Jewish Sephardic communities living in Muslim countries continued the practice till as late as 1950, when an Act of the chief Rabbinate of Israel extended the ban on marrying more than one wife.
3. Hindus are more polygamous than Muslims The report of the 'Committee of The Status of Woman in Islam', published in 1975 mentions on page numbers 66,67 that the percentage of polygamous marriages between the year 1951 -1961 was 5.06 among the Hindus and only 4.31 among the Muslims. According to Indian law only Muslim men are permitted to have more than one wife. It is illegal for any non-Muslim in India to have more than one wife. Despite it being illegal, Hindus have more multiple wives as compared to the Muslim. One can imagine what would have been the percentage of polygamous marriages among the Hindus if the Indian government had made it legal for them. Earlier, there was no restriction even on Hindu men with respect to the number of wives allowed. It was only in 1954, when the Hindu Marriage Act was passed that it became illegal for a Hindu to have more than one wife. At present it is the Indian Law that restricts a Hindu man from having more than one wife and not the Hindu scriptures. Let us now analyse why Islam allows a man to have more than one wife.
4. Qur'an permits limited polygyny As I mentioned earlier, Qur'an is the only religious book on the face of the earth that says 'marry only one'. The context of this phrase is the following verse from Surah Nisa of the Glorious Qur'an: 'Marry woman of your choice in twos' threes' or fours' but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly, (with them), then only one' [Al-Qur'an 4:3]
Before the Qur'an was revealed, there was no upper limit for polygyny and many men had scores of wives, some even hundreds. Islam put an upper limit of four wives. Islam gives a man permission to marry two, three or four women, only on the condition that he deals with them justly. In the same chapter i.e. Surah Nisa verse 129 says: 'It is very difficult to be just and fair between women'. [Al-Qur'an (4:129)]
Therefore polygyny is not a rule but an exception. Many people are under the misconception that it is compulsory for a Muslim man to marry more than one wife.
Broadly, Islam has five categories of Do's and Dont's.
(i) 'Farz' i.e compulsory
(ii) 'Mustahab' i.e recommended or encouraged
(iii) 'Mubah' i.e permissible
(iv) 'Makruh' i.e 'not recommended' or discouraged
(v) 'Haram' i.e prohibited or forbidden
Polygyny falls in the middle category of things that are permissible. It cannot be said that a Muslim who has two, three or four wives is a better Muslim as compared to a Muslim who has only one wife.
5. Average life span of females is more than that of males By nature males and females are born in approximately the same ratio. During paediatric age however, in childhood itself a female child has more immunity than a male child. A female child can fight the germs and diseases better than the male child. For this reason, there are more deaths among males as compared to the females during paediatric age.
During wars, there are more men killed as compared to women. More men die due to accidents and diseases than women. The average life span of females is more than that of males, and at any given time one finds more widows in the world than widowers.
6. India has more male population than female due to female foeticide and infanticide. India is one of the few countries, along with the other neighbouring countries, in which the female population is less than the male population. The reason lies in the high rate of female infanticide in India, and the fact that more than one million female foetuses are aborted every year in this country, after they are identified as females. If this evil practice is stopped, then India too will have more females as compared to males.
7. World female population is more than male population In the USA, women outnumber men by 7.8 million. New York alone has one million more females as compared to the number of males, and of the male population of New York one-third are gays i.e sodomites. The USA as a whole has more than twenty-five million gays. This means that these people do not wish to marry women. Great Britain has four million more females as compared to males. Germany has five million more females as compared to males. Russia has nine million more females than males. God alone knows how many million more females there are in the whole world as compared to males.
8. Restricting each and every man to have only one wife is not practical Even if every man got married to one woman, there would still be more than thirty million more females in USA who would not be able to get husbands (considering that America has twenty five million gays). There would be more than four million females in Great Britain 5 million females in Germany and nine million females in Russia alone who would not be able to find a husband.
Suppose my sister happens to be one of the unmarried women living in USA, or suppose your sister happens to be one of the unmarried women in USA. The only two options remaining for her are that she either marries a man who already has a wife or becomes public property. There is no other option. I have posed this question to hundreds of non-Muslims and all opted for the first. However a few smart people before accepting, said they would prefer their sisters to remain virgins. Biologically, it is not possible for an average man or a woman to remain celibate throughout life. It may be possible in exceptional cases of one in ten thousand. In the vast majority, the person either gets married or performs illicit sex or indulges in other sexual perversions. Sex hormones are released in the adult body every day. That is the reason why Islam has prohibited monasticism.
In Western society it is common for a man to have mistresses and/or multiple extra-marital affairs, in which case, the woman leads a disgraceful, unprotected life. The same society, however, cannot accept a man having more than one wife, in which women retain their honourable, dignified position in society and lead a protected life.
Thus the only two options before a woman who cannot find a husband is to marry a married man or to become public property. Islam prefers giving women the honourable position by permitting the first option and disallowing the second. There are several other reasons, why Islam has permitted limited polygamy, but it is mainly to protect the modesty of women.
OH YEAH I WOULD LOVE SOMEONE TO SHOW ME THE SURAH(CHAPTER) ABOUT 72 females for a male IN QURAN. I have read Qura'n back to back and I did never found it?
Muslim bias/ amy 2004-04-06 23:26:57
At the moment, everyone is curious about Islam and Muslim practices because the US has tormented that 700 pound gorilla far too much.
Hey, I agree though. I'd love to see something about life in another part of the world like Ireland or estonia or something =-)
I've almost had enough of AMerica-- that's this America, 2004. I still love the Constitution though.
--from somewhere in the northeast US...
Lot of Muslim women have turned writers...Cool!/ Anonymous 2004-04-06 22:03:18
Agreed too long an article..Also not very well written author seems to be wanting to put too much into one article.
Talk about adultery when a religion allows you four wives what else do you need?? The man is allowed four wives and still in many parts of the world Muslim men are having 2 wives if not more(Author conveniently writes if the man can support them...How many people in today's society follow it? They do marry for pleasure still..Discouraged...Merely sounds like running away from the fact that Muslim marry more than once!) It's a very common phenomenon. Author has very nicely put it as no one practices it anymore..It still very much exists!! They also say if a muslim dies for religion he will get 70 virgins in heaven!!
Front page?/ Anonymous 2004-04-06 20:23:50
Once again, an article about Muslims has made the front page. I am beginning to see a very definite bias in this newspaper, and I miss the way it used to be- unbiased and interesting.
The article was not bad; I found it interesting enough, but I felt that it was entirely too long- I only finished reading it so that I felt like I was fully prepared to comment on it.
However, once again, there were a great deal of grammatical errors in this piece, and it was not terribly well written. I believe there are plenty of other articles that deserve the front page much more than this one.
