Science channel's "Biblical Mysteries Explained"

[Anonymous]

The jahaliyya did not exist. It is simply an historical construct, In this case one made by early Islamic historians. No one living in the jahaliyya knew they were living in it any more than anyone living in the antebellum South knew they were living in it.

Western historians tend not to use jahaliyya to describe that period of time; rather they tend to use terms like pre-ISlamic Arabia, which, unlike jahaliyya is a neutral descriptor of the period.

Early Islamic historians had an interest in glorifying Islam, and one of the ways they did was by denigrating what came before that.

Likewise, historians infatuated with rationality and science called an era in European history the age of Enlightenment, preceded by the Renaissance and denigrated the period before that, when in fact quite a bit of scholarship and learning took place, as the Dark Ages.

So yes, time existed before Muhammed received his revelations, but that does not mean the jahaliyya actually existed. Is it the Civil War or the War of Northern Aggression? Victors usually write the history. Doesn't mean it's truth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Sexism was particularly prominent in Arabia before the time of Mohammed (570?-632 AD). The Persian world was a very paternalistic society, and females were generally seen as an undesirable burden to a family struggling to survive. A common proverb held that it was "a generous deed to bury a female child." Nevertheless, the Koran, which collected the writings of Mohammed, introduced reforms that included the prohibition of female infanticide. Mohammed outlined the wrongfulness of infanticide in various sections of his holy scripture. He asked, with censure ' for example, how would a father account for his actions, "When the female child that had been buried alive shall be asked for what crime she was put to death?" "

Anonymous wrote:
You misread. If they were spoken as if they were the one, different words would not have been used: "Arabia" and "Persia." She is merely talking about how prominent sexism was in different muslim cultures. At that time, the Arabian and Persian were the two large Muslim cultures. Nice try attempting to trash a well known archeologist just to advance your false statements about Islam though.

Muslim cultures BEFORE the time of Mohammed? Uh-huh.

She did not say they were Muslim cultures before Muhammad. She merely referred to the two large paternalistic and sexist cultures that are well known to be the two large Muslim cultures today.

No, she didn't. You did. You made an oopsie, and I enjoyed pointing it out.

And she isn't well known in any way, btw.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Lets keep this discussion on the merits and try to avoid the personal insults, shall we?

No worries - I'm gonna be like you - get personal, then throw a little apology in, and pretend it doesn't matter to me if you accept it.

The author who you allege has simply "regurgitated what the Quran says" is a renowned religious scholar. Is it possible that you are simply discounting his statement because he directly contradicts your statement that the Jahiliyah (age of ignorance) never occurred? Please post your bio so that we may compare your qualification to make such a statement with his. Here is the scholar's bio:

M. Jeurgensmeyer: erector of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, professor of sociology and global studies, and affiliate professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a pioneer in the field of global studies and writes on global religion, religious violence, conflict resolution and South Asian religion and politics. He has published more than three hundred articles and twenty books, including the recent Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State (University of California Press, 2008).

But remember, he is not the only scholar, historian, or anthropologist that refutes your statement that the jahilyah never occurred. The vast majority stand in contradiction to your statement.

There is overwhelming evidence that the period of the jahiliyah occurred and that Prophet Muhammad's revelation elevated the status of women considerably. Any google research will show this. It seems to me that you may be hoping to hide this fact in your effort to tarnish the religion of Islam.

You are misstating the argument. No one questioned that Islam improved the lot of women. The discussion has always been about the extent of that improvement (was it all that good?) and their prior position (was it all that bad?) The writing on the time of jahiliya is done primarily through the Quranic lens because there is simply very little independent evidence on how things really were at that time. Islam gives women many rights but also imposes many, many limitations on these rights. Pointing these limitations out is not Islamophobic. It's also not Islamophobic to point out that some of the rights attributed to Islam have existed prior to its advent - women did own and inherit property, engage in independent commercial activity and received dowries. It's wrong to claim Islam invented these rights. If you think that tarnishes your religion, whatever.

Here's the problem, though. You say the discussion has always been about the extent of that improvement. However, if you judge the extent of that improvement by the practice of Islam by so called Muslim countries today, you will inevitably misinterpret Islam, because as I have stated several times, the condition and treatment of women has deteriorated since the Prophets death, and Muslim countries have reverted back to almost pre islamic times. Hence, your mistake is that to understand the effectiveness of Islam, you are looking at current Muslim society. And you make this make repeatedly through hundreds of posts.

Moreover, what you just wrote was an outright lie. You stated (if it was, in fact, you or another islamophobe) that the Jahiliyah is a bit of a farce, created by the imaginations of Muslims to persuade the world that Islam elevated the status of women. You used Khadija, the rich merchant wife of the Prophet, to show pre islamic women did have rights and were not living in an age of ignorance or darkness. Now that I have provided the evidence of several renowned religious scholars whose assertion directly contradict your opinion, the goal posts have suddenly moved…again. Now you allege you never denied the status of women was improved by Islam, but were always focused on whether it improved it enough.

You then allege there isn't enough evidence of the jahiliyah period. However, these religious scholars concluded that there was indeed a period of time Arabs refer to as the Jahiliyah and it was a time of hedonism and ignorance. They all concluded that Islam did indeed greatly improve the status of women. You then alleged that all these scholars simply relied on the Quran for the basis of their opinion and regurgitated information from the Quran. Renowned religious scholars (historians, archeologists) do not assume the truth of religious text. They look for corroborating evidence. For example, Arabs wrote quite a bit of poetry and their pre islamic poetry was full of lustful descriptions of amorous encounters, adultery, and fornication. This is simply one example of the type of hedonism during the pre-islamic, jahilyah period. You are naive to assume you know how they came to their conclusions.

I'm watching you go around and around the merry-go-round.
You think lustful descriptions of amorous encounters are actually proof of low status of women? There's therapy available to sort that out.

Not all scholars agree on what you posted. Scholars are required to demonstrate how they came to their conclusions to be taken seriously. If they don't, I'll make my own conclusions on their rigor. I also posted scholarly work that provides an alternative view. Don't lie that ALL scholars agree.

[Anonymous]

"Mohammed outlined the wrongfulness of infanticide in various sections of his holy scripture. He asked, with censure ' for example, how would a father account for his actions, "When the female child that had been buried alive shall be asked for what crime she was put to death?" "


I am getting confused on who is Muslim and who is not. The above quote was presumably written by a Muslin, yet it says that Muhanned outlined in his holy scripture. The proper way to say this if one is Muslim is the Quran (not Muhammed) asks a father to account for his actions because Muhammed did not write the Quran; the Quran was revealed to him.

In any case, the quote completely distorts Sura 81 which it is paraphrasing. This sura does NOT prohibit or censure female infanticide. It does not. not ask a father to account for his actions; there is no father in it, let alone one who is censured. Rather, the image of a girl buried alive is used as a literary devise..

Sura 81 is an apocalyptical sura that describes the end of days. It list a number of things that are highly unlikely, even impossible as demonstrative of what happens on that day. One of these is that the sun is wrapped in darkness, a near impossible and unexpected thing. Another is that adult female camels are neglected. No person of the desert would neglect their camels; it is even more impossible that adult female camels would be neglected because their milk is vital for sustenance.

It is near impossible that someone would ask a child buried alive anything and if they did what crime they committed would be highly unlikely as it is a rhetorical question. It is even more unlikely one would ask a buried girl this than a buried boy. There is an element of literary irony here; female adult camels are seen as the least likely to be neglected and female human infants who were seen as too valuless to keep alive are seen as least likely to be asked anything.

Signs of the end of days include neglect of female camels and questions to dead female babies. The nature of end of day literature is that things happen that are against the normal course of things. The dead girl baby in this verse is not there to condemn female infanticidej she is there as a poetic device to convey an idea of the extraordinary things defying normal experience and logic that will happen on the Day of Judgment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I'm well aware of what an IP can and can not reveal. I'm also aware of the steps necessary to get the identity behind an IP and what criteria must be satisfied for it to be revealed. It is not an easy task. However, I never brought up the issue of an IP. I suspect one of our islamophobes did out of concern for her own identity or others. The writer has expressed an interest in finding the name of the organization one or a few of our islamophobes works for and she does not need an IP address to determine that. All one needs is very good connections. If there is no such organization, the writer(s) still have ample posts to choose from in writing their articles.

No. You never brought up IPs because apparently you never understood anything about them. Otherwise you would never have claimed, as you did repeatedly, that the moderator was ready to help you figure out which "unnamed Islamophobe" oeganizations were posting here. If you had understood IPs you could have saved yourself a lot of embarrassment.

I have to see the post where I supposedly said the moderator was ready to help me figure out organization was posting here. Please let me see that. I never brought up the issue of IP's. But humor me. Show me the post where I said that.

You're misquoting (not for the first time) - please reread the bolded part. I never said you mentioned IPs, mainly because I don't believe you understand IPs or the fact that IPs are the only way (short of intercepting somebody's wifi or cellular account) to link a name to a given post.

To repeat, without IPs you have nothing. Even with IPs you have very little; you just have the host name and the poster's city, but you still don't have personal names or addresses. To get the posters' names and addresses you'd need (1) the IPs PLUS (2) help from the FBI or Homeland Security or FinCen or the NSA, and that's not gonna happen.

Instead, the moderator posted to say that you had asked him for help. And he was the one who brought up IPs, in the context of mentioning that he wasn't going to give them to you.

So, I repeat my assertion to you. In the absence of (1) posters' IP addresses, and (2) help from spy agencies, you don't have anything more than a bucket of warm spit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Moreover, what you just wrote was an outright lie. You stated (if it was, in fact, you or another islamophobe) that the Jahiliyah is a bit of a farce, created by the imaginations of Muslims to persuade the world that Islam elevated the status of women. You used Khadija, the rich merchant wife of the Prophet, to show pre islamic women did have rights and were not living in an age of ignorance or darkness.

Leila Ahmed agrees that "jahilia" was a bit of a farce. Let's read carefully:

“Islamic civilization developed a construct of history that labeled the pre-Islamic period the Age of Ignorance and projected Islam as the sole source of all that was civilized – and used that construct so effectively in its rewriting of history that the peoples of the Middle East lost all knowledge of the past civilizations of the religion. Obviously that construct was ideologically serviceable, successfuly concealing, among other things, the fact that in some cultures of the Middle East women had been considerably better off before the rise of Islam than afterwards.” (p.37)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Here's the problem, though. You say the discussion has always been about the extent of that improvement. However, if you judge the extent of that improvement by the practice of Islam by so called Muslim countries today, you will inevitably misinterpret Islam, because as I have stated several times, the condition and treatment of women has deteriorated since the Prophets death, and Muslim countries have reverted back to almost pre islamic times. Hence, your mistake is that to understand the effectiveness of Islam, you are looking at current Muslim society. And you make this make repeatedly through hundreds of posts.

Moreover, what you just wrote was an outright lie. You stated (if it was, in fact, you or another islamophobe) that the Jahiliyah is a bit of a farce, created by the imaginations of Muslims to persuade the world that Islam elevated the status of women. You used Khadija, the rich merchant wife of the Prophet, to show pre islamic women did have rights and were not living in an age of ignorance or darkness. Now that I have provided the evidence of several renowned religious scholars whose assertion directly contradict your opinion, the goal posts have suddenly moved…again. Now you allege you never denied the status of women was improved by Islam, but were always focused on whether it improved it enough.

You then allege there isn't enough evidence of the jahiliyah period. However, these religious scholars concluded that there was indeed a period of time Arabs refer to as the Jahiliyah and it was a time of hedonism and ignorance. They all concluded that Islam did indeed greatly improve the status of women. You then alleged that all these scholars simply relied on the Quran for the basis of their opinion and regurgitated information from the Quran. Renowned religious scholars (historians, archeologists) do not assume the truth of religious text. They look for corroborating evidence. For example, Arabs wrote quite a bit of poetry and their pre islamic poetry was full of lustful descriptions of amorous encounters, adultery, and fornication. This is simply one example of the type of hedonism during the pre-islamic, jahilyah period. You are naive to assume you know how they came to their conclusions.

I'm watching you go around and around the merry-go-round.

Lustful descriptions of amorous encounters are a very good thing.

[Anonymous]

Let's unpack the next batch of your...stuff.

Anonymous wrote:
Here's the problem, though. You say the discussion has always been about the extent of that improvement. However, if you judge the extent of that improvement by the practice of Islam by so called Muslim countries today, you will inevitably misinterpret Islam, because as I have stated several times, the condition and treatment of women has deteriorated since the Prophets death, and Muslim countries have reverted back to almost pre islamic times. Hence, your mistake is that to understand the effectiveness of Islam, you are looking at current Muslim society. And you make this make repeatedly through hundreds of posts.

No, I never use current Muslim-majority societies for proof, I only look at the rule and scripture. If you want to have a discussion on why Muslims failed to leverage Islam to create enviable societies, that's a very interesting subject, and you're welcome to open a new thread on that.

Anonymous wrote:
Moreover, what you just wrote was an outright lie. You stated (if it was, in fact, you or another islamophobe) that the Jahiliyah is a bit of a farce, created by the imaginations of Muslims to persuade the world that Islam elevated the status of women. You used Khadija, the rich merchant wife of the Prophet, to show pre islamic women did have rights and were not living in an age of ignorance or darkness. Now that I have provided the evidence of several renowned religious scholars whose assertion directly contradict your opinion, the goal posts have suddenly moved…again. Now you allege you never denied the status of women was improved by Islam, but were always focused on whether it improved it enough.

Leila Ahmed agrees with me. You brought the guy funded by Al-Saud.

Anonymous wrote:
You then allege there isn't enough evidence of the jahiliyah period. However, these religious scholars concluded that there was indeed a period of time Arabs refer to as the Jahiliyah and it was a time of hedonism and ignorance.

Don't be ridiculous - of course there was a period of time before Islam, it's not like Muhammad jump-started time. The name for that period is a branding effort spearheaded by Muslims, and its characterization as the time of hedonism and ignorance is questionable. Of course they were ignorant of Islam, but they were also ignorant of X-files, nuclear fusion and everything that was to come in the future, so I don't think you can hang your argument on that peg.

Anonymous wrote:
They all concluded that Islam did indeed greatly improve the status of women.

No, not all.

Anonymous wrote:
You then alleged that all these scholars simply relied on the Quran for the basis of their opinion and regurgitated information from the Quran. Renowned religious scholars (historians, archeologists) do not assume the truth of religious text. They look for corroborating evidence.

It is custom in scholarly writing to present your corroborating evidence rather than pump your chest, say "I'm a famous scholar" and assume people will believe you.

Anonymous wrote:
For example, Arabs wrote quite a bit of poetry and their pre islamic poetry was full of lustful descriptions of amorous encounters, adultery, and fornication. This is simply one example of the type of hedonism during the pre-islamic, jahilyah period. You are naive to assume you know how they came to their conclusions.

I DON"T know how they came to their conclusion - it's their job to demonstrate that, not mine. I already shared with you my opinion on the value of lustful descriptions and amorous encounters. They aren't a bad thing. And neither is hedonism.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Lets keep this discussion on the merits and try to avoid the personal insults, shall we?

No worries - I'm gonna be like you - get personal, then throw a little apology in, and pretend it doesn't matter to me if you accept it.

The author who you allege has simply "regurgitated what the Quran says" is a renowned religious scholar. Is it possible that you are simply discounting his statement because he directly contradicts your statement that the Jahiliyah (age of ignorance) never occurred? Please post your bio so that we may compare your qualification to make such a statement with his. Here is the scholar's bio:

M. Jeurgensmeyer: erector of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, professor of sociology and global studies, and affiliate professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a pioneer in the field of global studies and writes on global religion, religious violence, conflict resolution and South Asian religion and politics. He has published more than three hundred articles and twenty books, including the recent Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State (University of California Press, 2008).

But remember, he is not the only scholar, historian, or anthropologist that refutes your statement that the jahilyah never occurred. The vast majority stand in contradiction to your statement.

There is overwhelming evidence that the period of the jahiliyah occurred and that Prophet Muhammad's revelation elevated the status of women considerably. Any google research will show this. It seems to me that you may be hoping to hide this fact in your effort to tarnish the religion of Islam.

You are misstating the argument. No one questioned that Islam improved the lot of women. The discussion has always been about the extent of that improvement (was it all that good?) and their prior position (was it all that bad?) The writing on the time of jahiliya is done primarily through the Quranic lens because there is simply very little independent evidence on how things really were at that time. Islam gives women many rights but also imposes many, many limitations on these rights. Pointing these limitations out is not Islamophobic. It's also not Islamophobic to point out that some of the rights attributed to Islam have existed prior to its advent - women did own and inherit property, engage in independent commercial activity and received dowries. It's wrong to claim Islam invented these rights. If you think that tarnishes your religion, whatever.

Here's the problem, though. You say the discussion has always been about the extent of that improvement. However, if you judge the extent of that improvement by the practice of Islam by so called Muslim countries today, you will inevitably misinterpret Islam, because as I have stated several times, the condition and treatment of women has deteriorated since the Prophets death, and Muslim countries have reverted back to almost pre islamic times. Hence, your mistake is that to understand the effectiveness of Islam, you are looking at current Muslim society. And you make this make repeatedly through hundreds of posts.

Moreover, what you just wrote was an outright lie. You stated (if it was, in fact, you or another islamophobe) that the Jahiliyah is a bit of a farce, created by the imaginations of Muslims to persuade the world that Islam elevated the status of women. You used Khadija, the rich merchant wife of the Prophet, to show pre islamic women did have rights and were not living in an age of ignorance or darkness. Now that I have provided the evidence of several renowned religious scholars whose assertion directly contradict your opinion, the goal posts have suddenly moved…again. Now you allege you never denied the status of women was improved by Islam, but were always focused on whether it improved it enough.

You then allege there isn't enough evidence of the jahiliyah period. However, these religious scholars concluded that there was indeed a period of time Arabs refer to as the Jahiliyah and it was a time of hedonism and ignorance. They all concluded that Islam did indeed greatly improve the status of women. You then alleged that all these scholars simply relied on the Quran for the basis of their opinion and regurgitated information from the Quran. Renowned religious scholars (historians, archeologists) do not assume the truth of religious text. They look for corroborating evidence. For example, Arabs wrote quite a bit of poetry and their pre islamic poetry was full of lustful descriptions of amorous encounters, adultery, and fornication. This is simply one example of the type of hedonism during the pre-islamic, jahilyah period. You are naive to assume you know how they came to their conclusions.

I'm watching you go around and around the merry-go-round.

You think lustful descriptions of amorous encounters are actually proof of low status of women? There's therapy available to sort that out.

Not all scholars agree on what you posted. Scholars are required to demonstrate how they came to their conclusions to be taken seriously. If they don't, I'll make my own conclusions on their rigor. I also posted scholarly work that provides an alternative view. Don't lie that ALL scholars agree.

Lustful descriptions of rampant fornication and adultery were examples of a hedonistic society of men taking treating women as sex objects. And this is indicative of the low status women were put in, yes. There is no nobility or dignity in disregarding the sanctity of marriage or engaging in acts that produce illegitimate children.

The vast majority of the most important scholars disagree with you. So please stop publishing false or misleading information about Islam.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Lustful descriptions of rampant fornication and adultery were examples of a hedonistic society of men taking treating women as sex objects. And this is indicative of the low status women were put in, yes. There is no nobility or dignity in disregarding the sanctity of marriage or engaging in acts that produce illegitimate children.

As long as women were free to treat men as sex objects, it's not an indication of a low status of women. Is there evidence lustful descriptions were limited to men?

As far as disregarding "the sanctity of marriage", most women will feel bringing women #2, #3 and #4 into the marriage without their consent violates its sanctity as much - or more - as any lustful descriptions. "Illegitimate children" is a social construct - a child is whatever society agrees to consider him or her.

Anonymous wrote:
The vast majority of the most important scholars disagree with you. So please stop publishing false or misleading information about Islam.

Leila Ahmed doesn't - is she not a scholar?

I"ll publish what I see fit, thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Lustful descriptions of rampant fornication and adultery were examples of a hedonistic society of men taking treating women as sex objects. And this is indicative of the low status women were put in, yes. There is no nobility or dignity in disregarding the sanctity of marriage or engaging in acts that produce illegitimate children.

As long as women were free to treat men as sex objects, it's not an indication of a low status of women. Is there evidence lustful descriptions were limited to men?

As far as disregarding "the sanctity of marriage", most women will feel bringing women #2, #3 and #4 into the marriage without their consent violates its sanctity as much - or more - as any lustful descriptions. "Illegitimate children" is a social construct - a child is whatever society agrees to consider him or her.

Anonymous wrote:
The vast majority of the most important scholars disagree with you. So please stop publishing false or misleading information about Islam.

Leila Ahmed doesn't - is she not a scholar?

I"ll publish what I see fit, thanks.

No where in the Quran does it permit a man to take additional wives against the wishes of his first wife. No where. This is a convenient lie you have made up just to put Islam down. In fact it says in the Quran that if a man can not treat them equally, he SHOULD NOT TAKE ON MORE THAN ONE WIFE. Read Islamic history and you will see under what circumstances the prophet took additional wives. Often it was because women were orphaned or their husbands killed in war with no resource to help care for their children. You are one woefully uneducated about islamic history.

[Anonymous]

A man does not need the permission of his first wife to take a second wife. He'll probably tell her though--the inheritance due her from her husband is cut in half when he takes a second wife.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Lustful descriptions of rampant fornication and adultery were examples of a hedonistic society of men taking treating women as sex objects. And this is indicative of the low status women were put in, yes. There is no nobility or dignity in disregarding the sanctity of marriage or engaging in acts that produce illegitimate children.

As long as women were free to treat men as sex objects, it's not an indication of a low status of women. Is there evidence lustful descriptions were limited to men?

As far as disregarding "the sanctity of marriage", most women will feel bringing women #2, #3 and #4 into the marriage without their consent violates its sanctity as much - or more - as any lustful descriptions. "Illegitimate children" is a social construct - a child is whatever society agrees to consider him or her.

Anonymous wrote:
The vast majority of the most important scholars disagree with you. So please stop publishing false or misleading information about Islam.

Leila Ahmed doesn't - is she not a scholar?

I"ll publish what I see fit, thanks.

No where in the Quran does it permit a man to take additional wives against the wishes of his first wife. No where. This is a convenient lie you have made up just to put Islam down. In fact it says in the Quran that if a man can not treat them equally, he SHOULD NOT TAKE ON MORE THAN ONE WIFE. Read Islamic history and you will see under what circumstances the prophet took additional wives. Often it was because women were orphaned or their husbands killed in war with no resource to help care for their children. You are one woefully uneducated about islamic history.

These are very different things.

1. True, there is no explicit permission for a man to take a second wife against the first wife's wishes.

But this is not the same thing as

2. An explicit requirement that the husband respect the first wife's wishes re a second wife.

And all of this is also different from

3. A guy asking himself if he can treat multiple wives equally wrt financial support, marital relations, and shelter, finding that he thinks he probably can, and then going ahead with a second wife.

In other words, the requirement is to treat all wives equally. That's a good requirement. But it is not a requirement to seek the first wife's OK.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Lustful descriptions of rampant fornication and adultery were examples of a hedonistic society of men taking treating women as sex objects. And this is indicative of the low status women were put in, yes. There is no nobility or dignity in disregarding the sanctity of marriage or engaging in acts that produce illegitimate children.

As long as women were free to treat men as sex objects, it's not an indication of a low status of women. Is there evidence lustful descriptions were limited to men?

As far as disregarding "the sanctity of marriage", most women will feel bringing women #2, #3 and #4 into the marriage without their consent violates its sanctity as much - or more - as any lustful descriptions. "Illegitimate children" is a social construct - a child is whatever society agrees to consider him or her.

Anonymous wrote:
The vast majority of the most important scholars disagree with you. So please stop publishing false or misleading information about Islam.

Leila Ahmed doesn't - is she not a scholar?

I"ll publish what I see fit, thanks.

No where in the Quran does it permit a man to take additional wives against the wishes of his first wife. No where. This is a convenient lie you have made up just to put Islam down. In fact it says in the Quran that if a man can not treat them equally, he SHOULD NOT TAKE ON MORE THAN ONE WIFE. Read Islamic history and you will see under what circumstances the prophet took additional wives. Often it was because women were orphaned or their husbands killed in war with no resource to help care for their children. You are one woefully uneducated about islamic history.

These are very different things.

1. True, there is no explicit permission for a man to take a second wife against the first wife's wishes.

But this is not the same thing as

2. An explicit requirement that the husband respect the first wife's wishes re a second wife.

And all of this is also different from

3. A guy asking himself if he can treat multiple wives equally wrt financial support, marital relations, and shelter, finding that he thinks he probably can, and then going ahead with a second wife.

In other words, the requirement is to treat all wives equally. That's a good requirement. But it is not a requirement to seek the first wife's OK.

I'm going to quote to you from Dr. Badawi's web site regarding this question:

Host: What about the first wife? Is it necessary that she consent to the husband taking a second wife? What options and protection are open to her as the first wife?



Jamal Badawi:

We can not say that the agreement of the first wife to her husband taking a second wife is an absolute prerequisite. But we can say that within the spirit of Islam and the spirit of Islamic Law in general that it is only appropriate to have some discussion and consultation about the matter with the first wife. A person who gets married to a second wife in secret, or to surprises the first wife after the decision is made is not regarded to have good character. This is not a decent act on the behalf of a Muslim. We are not talking strictly in terms of legality but appropriateness. It is however, possible that the first wife has what amounts to a veto right on her husband taking a second wife. In Islamic Law at the time of marriage if the first wife specified in the marriage contract that her husband should not take a second wife many jurists say that this condition is enforceable and would be binding on the husband. Various schools differ in the explanation but not the principle. In the Hanbali School of jurisprudence they say that marriage could be invalidated if he takes a second wife on the basis of violation or breaking of the marriage contract. In other schools like the Maliki School of jurisprudence they said that she could ask for the nullification of the marriage because of harm was inflicted upon her because of his violation of the contractual commitment or agreement. This would be a no fault type of divorce on her part.



There is also another for of protection for the first wife. This can amount to a veto right on polygamy. This is called ismah in Arabic which is translated in English delegated repudiation. This simply mean that a woman at the time of marriage may specify in the contract that she would have the unilateral right to divorce her husband in this case. In which case if her husband takes a second wife and she doest feel happy with it she has the right according to that clause to divorce her husband unilaterally.

[Anonymous]

So, as PP said, there is no explicit requirement that the husband respect the first wife's wishes re a second wife---unless no second wife is written into the marriage contract.

This would be a very rare clause in an Islamic marriage contract. There are perhaps more contracts that allow the wife unilateral right of divorce, but even this provision is not commonly encountered.