Allah (SWT) said:” Marry of the women that please you: two, three, or four. But if you feel that you shall not be able to deal justly, then only one or what your right hand possesses. That would be more suitable to prevent you from doing injustice.” (An-Nisa’: 3)
Women outnumber men at birth and live longer than men do. American women today can expect to live to be 77.9 years old, and men can expect to live to age 70.3, according to the Centre for Health Statistics. Couple that with the high incidence of violent crime among males, their war dead, and the rise in the rates of homosexuality, and it becomes obvious that there are not enough men for each woman to have one. Thus, many women are obliged to become mistresses, girlfriends, and playmates to fulfil their natural physical needs, leaving their psychological needs distorted in such demeaning relationships.
Muslims can choose to join the West in its death throes, falsely called “progress and sophistication”, or choose to retain Islamic values. It is a fact that the average married Western citizen continues to seek personal sexual freedom outside the framework of marriage. Serial or progressive monogamy, in which a person remarries many times, is so widespread today that it has arrived as an alternative marriage structure in American society. Some researchers predict that we are close to the day when 85% of all men and women reaching the age of sixty-five (in the United States) will have been remarried at least once. Thus, we can see that an Islamic society, which honors, shelters, and protects women, is definitely preferable to a corrupt open society that forces women into despicable roles out of desperation or ignorance to compete with men for survival. Men are the natural guardians of women, and every woman should be under the care of a guardian.
There is no doubt that no woman relishes the thought of sharing her husband with another and that plural marriages provide a base for jealousies to arise. However, Islamic law always prioritizes the general welfare of society over individual discomfort or personal preferences. Hence, the Islamic marriage system includes polygyny to protect and provide for the ever-present surplus of females in most human societies. The institution of polygyny in the Islamic marriage system also takes into account certain undeniable aspects of human nature that affect male-female relationships. These aspects represent the instincts that must be present for men to be prepared and able to provide for the physical and emotional needs of the surplus females in society. Simply stated, men must have a greater instinctual sexual drive and a natural desire to have more than one wife. The first of the two facts is borne out by scientific studies conducted by Dr. Masters and Dr. Johnson, and others who followed in their footsteps. It has clearly been established through their clinical research that men in general are much more easily aroused sexually than women. This is borne out in the high frequency of premature ejaculation in men and statistics on the vast number of women who never experience orgasm during their marriages. The second fact is obvious from the high frequency of extra-marital sex among Western males as opposed to females and the historical existence of institutionalized polygyny in human society at all stages of recorded human history and in all present-day primitive societies which have been studied, with very few exceptions.
The answer as to why women, in general, tend to be less easily aroused sexually than men and more satisfied with one mate under normal conditions lies in the societal need for family structure and stability. These factors must be naturally present in women for there to be any stability in family relations. That is, if most women were naturally like men in these two aspects, families could never be established. This fact is borne out by the tremendous breakdown of the family structure in Western society due to sexual revolution. Single-parent families have become a recognized and accepted variation of family structure despite their inherent socio-economic weaknesses and documented psychological damage, which often results among their members.
Given these natural but complementary differences between men and women and the normal and natural attraction that exists between the sexes, Islam enjoins modesty in society to avoid sexual chaos and harassment of females.
As mentioned previously, in Islam, women are advised not to make a public display of their beauty and finery. Women are also obliged, whether outside or inside their homes, to cover all of their bodies except their faces and hands when in the presence of men whom they could marry. The covering must also be loose and opaque so as not to reveal the woman’s shape or what she is wearing underneath it.
Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips
(To be continued)
