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In Defense of Polygamy
By: B. Aisha Lemu
B. Aisha Lemu was born in England and became a Muslim while in college. She is Director General of the Islamic Education Trust in Niger State, Nigeria. Reprinted here is part of a talk she gave (and part of the discussion that followed) at the International Islamic Conference held in London.

Perhaps the aspect of Islam in respect of women which is most prominent in the Western mind is that of polygamy. Firstly let me clarify that Islam does not impose polygamy as a universal practice. The Prophet himself was a monogamist for the greater part of his married life, from the age of twenty-five when he married Khadija until he was fifty when she died. One should therefore regard monogamy as the norm and polygamy as the exception. One may observe that, although it has been abused in some times and some places, polygamy has under certain circumstances a valuable function. In some situations it may be considered as the lesser of two evils, and in other situations it may even be a positive beneficial arrangement. The most obvious example of this occurs in times of war when there are inevitably large numbers of windows and girls whose fiancés and husbands have been killed in the fighting. One has only to recall the figures of the dead in the first and second world wars to be aware that literally millions of women and girls lost their husbands and fiancés and were left alone without any income or care or protection for themselves or their children. If it is still maintained that under these circumstances a man may marry only one wife, what options are left to the millions of other women who have no hope of getting a husband? Their choice, bluntly stated, is between a chaste and childless old maidenhood, or becoming somebody’s mistress—that is, an