Polygamy According To Shari'ah
Part 2 of an ongoing series on polygamy and Islam

A man is allowed up to four wives.

He does not need the permission of previous wives to enter into a new marriage.

He should treat them all equally, and should rotate his nights among them so that each gets the same amount of time.

Each wife has the right to food, clothing, shelter, and maintenance, and this should be the same for each wife. Each should be given her own separate house or a separate apartment for her and her children to live in, so as to minimize conflict and jealousy.

Admittedly, the Qur'an does mention that treating all wives equally is not possible, but it is up to the husband to decide if he is treating his wives equally -- he has full authority over his family. If one or more of the wives complains, he should take that into account, but there is no court that will order him to treat them better, although the wife or wives may get male family members to talk to the husband on her behalf.

He should not treat the children of one wife better than those of another wife.

Concubines (female slaves) are not considered to be wives, and they do not count towards the four-wife limit (for example, the hundreds of concubines of the Turkish sultan). A man may have as many as he wants, and they have no rights over him other than to be minimally fed, clothed, and sheltered. The children of a concubine are considered to be as legitimate as those from a legal wife, and at the death of her master an umm walad, a slave who has borne her master a child, becomes free.

What Would Reform Islam Look Like?

Based on the model of Reform Judaism, I would expect the following:

* Abandonment of Shari'ah, or at least complete and total re-interpretation, with the added caveat that much of it is symbolic, and what really matters is the thought behind it
* Prayers in any language, not just Arabic, and wider use of translations of the Qur'an (no more memorization of Qur'an in Arabic for non-Arabic speakers)
* Separation of religion and state
* More openness to non-Muslims, their beliefs and their ways of life (no more "Don't do it because the Jews/Christians/unbelievers do it")
* More private and emotional, rather than legalistic
* Recognition that, although Muhammad and his companions were "the best of Muslims," the world has changed and their ways of doing things may not be appropriate to this day and age
* Complete equality for women, no more separation of men and women, same rights as men in all aspects of life

Now, would this be Islam? That is what I ask myself!

What is Islam, anyway? Some Muslims insist that certain Muslim countries with rather barbaric practices "are not practicing true Islam." Well, what is True Islam? And who gets to define it? The 'ulama? The sheikh of Al-Azhar University in Cairo? The Ayatollah (for Shi'ites)? The mass of scholarly opinion over the centuries? Muslims themselves? Which ones? The ones that make the most noise? The ones that called for Salman Rushdie's head on a platter for apostasizing from Islam? Islamic Studies professors, most of whom aren't even Muslim? Who?

Can Islam Be Reformed?

The problem is that most calls for reform of Islam come from non-Muslims,
and you can guess how well Muslims take to infidels telling them that their
religion sucks and how they think it should be. More likely, they will insist
that Islam needs no reformation (a theme I've heard in a couple of Friday
sermons myself) and that it is perfect, complete, the clear will of Allah valid
for all times and all places ("This day I have perfected your religion for
you, completed my favor upon you, and have chosen for you Islam as your
religion" (5:3, supposedly the last verse in the Qur'an to be revealed). And
don't worry about what those infidels think ("fear them not, but fear Me") --
the only important thing is what Allah will think of you on the Day of
Judgement, when he will ask if you submitted yourself to his will as
recorded in Qur'an, Sunnah, and Shari'ah, or whether you went off to follow
the godless ways of the unbelievers.

Add to this the fact that Islam is not just a mere religion as Christianity or
Buddhism is, it is, as frequently stated, "a complete way of life," with no
separation between the sacred and secular, between government and
religion ("you can praise Allah by the way you cut your fingernails, if it is in
the manner prescribed by Islam") and you can see how Western notions of
separation of religion and state are totally foreign to Islam. Islam
absolutely pervades the lives of Muslims in a way that Christianity simply
does not in the lives of Christians. Muslims are supposed to give their
highest allegiance to Islam, not to a particular race or country. Throughout
Islamic history, the point of jihad was not so much to get people to convert
to Islam (and many countries so conquered did not become majority
Muslim for hundreds of years, and besides contributed plenty of money
through jizya), but to make the Shari'ah the law of the land. For any
Muslim, the test of whether a land was civilized and part of the Dar al-Islam
was whether it was under Shari'ah. According to most scholars, it was
forbidden for a Muslim to live under non-Muslim (i.e. non-Shari'ah) rule.
Shari'ah and Islam have historically been practically one and the same, at
least until recently.

Another problem with reform is that the people who do know the most
about Islam are typically the most fanatical, and can easily demolish their
more Westernized, more ignorant co-religionists. And being in the Dar
al-Harb and all its temptations sometimes leads to a greater clinging to
Islam than would be the case in a majority Muslim country. And many
Muslims who move to the US simply stop practicing Islam altogether, or
become apostates, so they aren't much help in reforming.

Judaism dealt with this problem by having no real worldly authority for
2,000 years, forcing it to figure out a way to fit Halakha (Jewish law) with
non-Jewish government. I don't know what it will take for Islam to figure
out this problem.