Demands of the Women’s Conference

The Women’s Conference made two demands. The first was that no marriage should be contracted or registered except with the permission of a judge. Judges should be prohibited from granting permission to any man who is incapable of maintaining good companionship and providing financially for more than one wife, including those already under his care and those for whom he is responsible among his parents or children. Additionally, there must be a necessity for this marriage, which the judge is to assess and determine accordingly.

The second demand was that if a man marries another woman while already married, his first wife should have the right to request annulment of the marriage unless she consents to his new marriage. This right to request annulment would apply each time he marries another woman. Furthermore, if the new wife was unaware that he was already married, she too would have the right to request annulment.

This is the first recommendation, and it is the first among the explicit recommendations. Two strange things are observed in its formulation:

First: It requires that the marriage contract or its registration be subject to the judge’s permission. As for registration, one might say that it does not address the validity of the contract itself, since documenting a contract is not the same as its validity. So, making the judge’s permission a condition for registration may not affect the contract’s validity, although it is entirely flawed in terms of outcome. However, to make the judge’s permission a condition for the validity of the contract — not just its documentation — is an innovation in Islam and a strange matter that leads to corruption. This implies that the judge’s permission is a condition for the religious validity of the contract, whereas the contract, in and of itself, is valid from every angle. If a ruler invalidates it on the grounds that it is not valid, when in fact he does not have the authority to make a valid and effective contract religiously invalid, then he is interfering with the divine bounds of what is lawful and unlawful. The validity or invalidity of a marriage is determined only by Allah the Almighty. Who, other than Allah, can dissolve a marriage by mere word?

Suppose the ruler does not recognize the validity of the marriage, which is a strange matter not seen in previous legislative proposals, then what becomes of the woman who was married through that contract? Is she left suspended — neither married nor single — and unable to marry another man because, according to Islamic Sharia, she remains in the marriage bond? Is it then permissible for a woman, married by a valid Islamic contract, to marry someone else? This is bizarre thinking. It reflects the mentality of those who have no regard for the sanctity of Islamic rulings. It is even stranger when this occurs in Egypt — the land of knowledge, of Al-Azhar, and of a Muslim head of state who does not wish to deviate from Islamic rulings on family matters.

Second: The judge is forbidden from granting permission unless it is proven that the man is capable of maintaining good companionship. But how is this to be proven? Is it to be verified through an administrative certificate from the police station? Or through the testimony of two civil servants that he is of good conduct and character? This too is strange thinking and could only come from minds that do not consider what Allah has permitted, nor do they respect His law. Rather, their only aim is to prohibit polygamy, as the churches have done.

What is even more astonishing is that they require, in addition to the above conditions, that there be a necessity for the marriage to be determined by the judge. But what counts as a necessity? Would it include the case of a man overwhelmed by sexual desire, for whom one woman is proven insufficient? It seems that in such cases, they would permit fornication but not polygamy, because, according to their corrupt tastes, their flawed reasoning, and their degenerate thinking, polygamy is more evil and more disastrous, since it does not resemble Western norms dominated by church doctrines.

Why Islam Permits Polygamy?

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Taken from the book: “Family Planning and Birth Control.”