what kind of woman frustrates you to leave her

Jemima Khan investigates why more and more than Muslim women in Britain are choosing to become "co-wives". For many divorced, widowed or older women, could polygamy be a practical answer to their issues?

Jemima Khan

Farzana is a senior nurse, 36, attractive, selfpossessed and articulate. "I have begun to consider polygamy," she tells me at a matchmaking outcome in primal London for divorced and widowed Muslims interested in marrying once again. "When y'all think nigh beloved in an Islamic way, the co-married woman thought makes sense."

According to Mizan Raja, who ready up the Islamic Circles customs network and presides over the eastward London Muslim matrimonial scene, women are increasingly electing to become "co-wives" – in other words, to become a man's second or third married woman. As I reported last year in theNew Statesman, Raja gets 5 to ten requests every week from women who are "comfortable with the notion of a function-time man". He explained: "Career women don't want a full-time hubby. They don't have time." So couples live separately, a husband visiting his wives on a rota.

A dapper City boy listening to Raja whispered to me: "Really, that's non right. In late twenties a daughter is considered past it, so this organization is the best she can go."

If you're divorced, widowed or over 30 and Muslim, finding a husband in this country tin can exist a challenge. Does polygamy, or more than specifically polygyny (a man taking more than than one wife, as opposed to a woman taking more one husband), as sanctioned by the Quran, offer a possible solution?

Aisha (not her real name), a divorced single mother with two children, recently chose to become a second wife. She was introduced to her hubby by a friend. She says that at first she was hesitant. "I was like, 'No, I can't do information technology. I'yard too jealous as a person. I wouldn't be able to do it.' But the more that time went on and I started thinking about it, especially more than maturely, I saw the beauty of it."

They agreed on the terms of the marriage by email, covering details such as "how many days he'd spend with me and how many days he'd spend with his other wife, and money and living arrangements". They then met twice, liked each other, ready a date and were married. Her husband now spends three days with Aisha and her two children from her previous spousal relationship and then three days with his other family, unless 1 of them is ill, in which case he stays to help but has to brand up the missed time to his other wife.

She confesses that "if he was to stay all the time I'd dear it", only says that having time off "is definitely benign in some ways likewise". She has "more than freedom" to run across her friends and her family unit, and it is a relief "not having a man in your face half the fourth dimension, when you are cranky, and he can go somewhere else and you can manage the kids on your own".

Every bit a divorcee, bringing up children on her own for three years before remarrying, she built upward an independent life for herself: "It'due south hard to allow your goals become for a man all over once again." Although she concedes they have had a "few teething problems" and that it took his first wife "some fourth dimension to come to terms with information technology", now, she says, they "accept come to an understanding . . . We are finding our feet." Both sets of children are aware of the new situation and have accepted information technology. In fact, she says that her married man'due south daughter from his kickoff marriage "can't wait to meet second Mummy" and her own son, who now has a begetter figure and "function model" that he was previously lacking, is "really happy with it". They accept yet to experience "a big family become-together", merely Aisha says she is "hopeful that will happen presently . . . I've spoken to her [the first wife] a couple of times. She seems actually lovely. I would really like for us to become good friends . . . for there to be that kind of bond of sisterhood between us."

The main obstacle to happiness, according to Aisha, "is the sense of buying" and jealousy. "Merely that's something that yous've merely got to use your wisdom to get past . . . It's more important for me to take a father for my children . . . to take a helping hand when I need it." She insists that problems arise only when the hubby does not treat both wives equally, as explicitly mandated in the Quran, or when the wives are non mature enough to rationalise and accept the situation.

Anecdotal bear witness, in the absence of the statistical kind, suggests that polygamy is on the rising in Britain. And according to a poll conducted over a week past Singlemuslim.com, 33 per cent of men and 9 per cent of women would choose to exist part of a polygamous marriage. Because such marriages take place through an unregistered marriage contract, they do not constitute bigamy, a crime in the Great britain.

The reasons for polygamy are complex. Aisha says that, from her point of view, "Single mums don't have the selection of the agglomeration . . . [Polygamy] is at that place so nosotros can yet have the benefits of spousal relationship, so nosotros don't have to exist left on the shelf, so our children tin nonetheless have part models, begetter figures, and so we can still have that emotional stability, financial stability and security."

The stigma of divorce, also as later marriages and the importing of foreign brides (xv,500 women were admitted to the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland in 2011 as wives of British men, according to Dwelling house Function figures), take all exacerbated the problem for Muslim women looking for a husband.

Aisha tells me that her husband saw polygamy equally his religious duty. "A lot of people think information technology'south but about sex but . . . sexual activity goes out the window after a while. If you don't want your husband marrying someone else, what would happen to these single mums, then, and these divorcees? Is it fair that they just stay on the shelf? We should be looking after our customs. Islam is all nigh community and order and nosotros should look afterward our brothers and our sisters equally, otherwise it's every man for themselves."

Kalsoom Bashir, the project manager of the Muslim women's rights organisation Inspire, and Khola Hasan of the Islamic Sharia Council in Leyton, east London, both believe that forced union is another reason for polygamy. British men are forced into marriages, ofttimes with cousins imported from "back dwelling house" with whom they accept cipher in common. "For a human being who has been in the hard situation of beingness forced into a marriage, and the numbers are huge in Britain, admittedly huge . . . for many of them, polygamy is a good way of existence happy and keeping the family happy," Hasan explains.

The Quran instructs Muslim men to "marry women of your pick two or three or four", but warns that "if you fright that y'all shall not exist able to bargain justly [with them] then only ane or [your concubines]. That is more plumbing equipment so that you exercise not deviate from the right form." The Prophet Muhammad said, "Whosoever has two wives and he inclines towards 1 to the exclusion of the other, he will come on the Twenty-four hour period of Judgement with his body dropping or angle down."

In other words, "Information technology is mission incommunicable," according to Mufti Barkatulla, a senior imam and sharia council guess in Leyton. He firmly believes that there is no identify for polygamy in modern Britain. "In that location are a number of cases nosotros have come beyond and there is hardly a case where a man can remainder all the duties required in a polygamous state of affairs . . . In today'southward industrial order, it is impossible to observe the conditions laid down by the scriptures." Polygamy, he points out, predates Islam and was permitted in Islam in the context of war to offer protection to state of war orphans and widows. Many of the Prophet'south eleven wives were widows.

Sara (not her real name) is a xl-year-erstwhile Muslim convert. She accepted the practice of polygamy as function of her religion and when she fell in love with a married human being, she was the one who suggested that she become his second wife. "I was decorated and studying. I felt I could cope with not having someone around all the time," she tells me.

In reality, though, Sara now says, their marriage was more like a religiously sanctioned affair. "Because of the social taboos against [polygamy], it had to be hole-and-corner from the community and I couldn't take any children . . . because then it will be known that he has a 2d wife." Although she met her husband's get-go wife, going on holiday with her once and even offer to babysit her children, the showtime wife never fully accustomed the situation. "I really had this idea that we somehow would somewhen notice some way of getting on . . . I was imagining information technology would be like these stories I have heard of where information technology works, so I idea information technology would only be a matter of time and we were destined to be together." Eventually, after vi years, Sara sought a divorce.

In his 25 years presiding over thousands of divorce cases at the Islamic Sharia Council, Mufti Barkatulla has heard many like stories. Betwixt 2010 and 2011, 43 out of the 700 applications for divorce to Leyton'southward sharia council cited polygamy as the main reason.

Mufti Barkatulla and Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, the one-time director of the Muslim Institute, devised a Muslim matrimony contract – in consequence, a religiously sanctioned prenup, to be signed at the fourth dimension of thenikah, or religious anniversary – that sought to address the imbalance in Muslim marriages, giving women equal rights to divorce, allowing them to feel safe from rape or corruption, and preventing husbands from taking a second married woman. It also states that thenikah must happen in conjunction with a civil ceremony, for actress protection.

He tells me the story of a adult female whose hubby "had agreed to a civil ceremony but because dates and everything were not agreed the husband kept on delaying information technology". One day when she got abode, she establish a observe on the door: "Everything is over. Collect your things from my sis's house." The adult female told him that she felt equally though she had been "on trial" simply somewhen was discarded.

An estimated 70-75 per cent of Muslim marriages in the Uk are non registered under the Marriage Act, different Christian and Jewish marriages, which are registered automatically. Mosques have the legal right to register to behave civil weddings, merely just about one in ten take chosen to exercise so. A nikah or Muslim matrimony can be performed anywhere, even using proxies or on Skype. When a union is not registered and the relationship breaks downwardly, the unregistered married woman has no rights to spousal or child back up and tin even exist left homeless, denied her due share. In the result of the hubby's death, the registered married woman and her children will inherit and the unregistered wife and children will not.

If Muslim marriages are unregistered, and take place outside of the jurisdiction of this country, there is no automatic recourse to justice through the British courts. Instead, an aggrieved party must get to an unregulated sharia quango for arbitration. The crossbencher Baroness (Caroline) Cox is concerned by this clash betwixt sharia and civil constabulary. "There is now operating in this country a kind of parallel quasi-legal system and that goes against the cardinal principle of liberal democracy of 1 constabulary for all." Of polygamy, she says: "To have more than one wife is non acceptable in the Britain and people . . . must accept the laws of the country they choose to alive in." In 2011, she introduced the Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Pecker, which had its second reading in the Business firm of Lords concluding October and "would make it illegal for whatever person or contacts to be established which would operate as a kind of alternative legal system. Anyone purporting to operate in that way in a judicial capacity would actually be committing a criminal offense that could [be punished with] a prison sentence for this alternative legal system." The beak volition be re-tabled in the next Parliament.

Khola Hasan of Leyton's sharia council believes that forcing mosques to register all nikahs, and thereby banning polygamy, will only make Muslims feel more persecuted. "The Muslim community in Britain already feels victimised," she says, and information technology will inevitably force the practice underground, leaving women more vulnerable. She argues that, rather than banning polygamy, which she views as a "solution to many complex and difficult situations", the practice should in fact be recognised by British police force.

According to the Singlemuslim.com poll, 61 per cent of Muslim men and 28 per cent of Muslim women agree with Hasan that British law should exist changed to permit polygamy. "Uk is refusing to accept that polygamy takes place," she says. "It's a reality and I think the British legal organization is going to have to open up its eyes and take that it's a reality in Britain.

"Polygamy is non going to get away."

"Jemima Khan and the Role-Fourth dimension Married woman" was broadcast on BBC Radio four on 29 April

This commodity was first published in the New Statesman

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Source: https://musliminstitute.org/freethinking/gender/what-kind-woman-willing-share-her-husband

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