* Polygamy allowed in Islam?

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 marriesmore than one woman, and the other is polyandry, where a woman marriesmore than one man. In Islam, limited polygyny is permitted; whereas polyandryis completely prohibited.

Now coming to the original question, why is a man allowed to have more thanone wife?

The Qur’an is the only religious scripture in the world that says,“marry only one”.

The 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 tohave only one wife. In none of the other religious scriptures, whether it be theVedas, the Ramayan, the Mahabharat, the Geeta, the Talmud or the Bible doesone find a restriction on the number of wives. According to these scriptures onecan marry as many as one wishes. It was only later, that the Hindu priests andthe Christian Church restricted the number of wives to one.

Many Hindu religious personalities, according to their scriptures, had multiplewives. King Dashrat, the father of Rama, had more than one wife. Krishna hadseveral 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 fewcenturies ago that the Church restricted the number of wives to one.

Polygymy is permitted in Judaism. According to Talmudic law, Abraham hadthree wives, and Solomon had hundreds of wives. The practice of polygynycontinued till Rabbi Gershom ben Yehudah (960 C.E to 1030 C.E) issued anedict against it. The Jewish Sephardic communities living in Muslim countriescontinued the practice till as late as 1950, until an Act of the Chief Rabbinate ofIsrael extended the ban on marrying more than one wife.

(*Interesting Note:- As per the 1975 census of India Hindus are morepolygynous than Muslims. The report of the ‘Committee of The Status ofWoman in Islam’, published in 1975 mentions on page numbers 66 and 67 that the percentage of polygamous marriages between the years 1951 and 1961 was 5.06% among the Hindus and only 4.31% among the Muslims. Accordingto Indian law only Muslim men are permitted to have more than one wife. It isillegal for any non-Muslim in India to have more than one wife. Despite it beingillegal, Hindus have more multiple wives as compared to Muslims. Earlier, therewas no restriction even on Hindu men with respect to the number of wivesallowed. It was only in 1954, when the Hindu Marriage Act was passed that itbecame illegal for a Hindu to have more than one wife. At present it is the IndianLaw that restricts a Hindu man from having more than one wife and not theHindu scriptures.)