Islamic, Secular, and Christian Marriage

A Cultural Lightning Rod

Islam has problems.  Lots of them.  If any want an easy-to-read account of Islam, we recommend Patrick Sookhdeo's A Pocket Guide to Islam.  [Ross Shire: Christian Focus Publications, 2010]  A chapter is dedicated in that brief book to "Women in Islam". 

Since Muhammad had fifteen wives and a number of concubines, it is reasonable to expect that Islamic doctrines on marriage and the family would turn out to be not just unreliable, but wretched.  Not that the secular West has any grounds upon which to criticize Islamic doctrines on marriage and the family.  After all, the secular notion of marriage and family is now so meaningless it has come to include two females and a budgie.

Marriage in Islam is not primarily a man and a woman leaving the homes of their childhoods, and cleaving to each other for life.  Islam permits a man to have up to four wives--and if any displease him, they can be divorced at whim and will, simply by formally uttering to the wife, "I divorce you" three times. So there!  Go tell that to the Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages.

When an Islamic marriage is contracted, it is almost always due to arrangements being made between two families, not two individuals.  Sookhdeo writes:

Muhammad's Hypocrisy

Revelations of Convenience 

According to revelations Muhammad claimed to receive, a Muslim was "entitled" to four wives at a time, and no more.  Except Muhammad, of course, who had special dispensation from Allah to have as many as thirteen.  

To prevent jealousy (in his harem) he spent one night with each of them in turn.  One day it was his wife Hafsa's turn.  She was away visiting her father but then returned unexpectedly.  She was furious to find the Prophet in bed with Mary, the Coptic maid and concubine.  Hafsa reproached him bitterly, threatening to tell the other wives.  Muhammad promised to stay away from the hated Mary if she would keep quiet.  Hafsa, however, confided in Aisha, who also hated Mary.  [Vishal Mangalwadi, The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 282.]

The scandal spread through the whole harem and Muhammad found himself ostracized.  But not to worry.

The Layman's Koran

If You Fear Your Wife is Disobedient . . . 

Sura 4 is a long rambling chapter in the Koran, although it bears the title "Women".  At 4.34 we read a "money quotation" which explains so much of Islamic society, social organisation, and jurisprudence.

Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the others, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them.  Good women are obedient.  They guard their unseen parts because Allah has guarded them.  As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them.  Then if they obey you, take no further action against them.  Allah is high, supreme.

 The Islamic doctrine of women being inferior to men is grounded in their respective being-in-itself.   Allah made the one superior, the other inferior.  The authority of men over women is grounded in one gender being superior in being than the other.  Then, to this ontological distinction, making males superior to females, is added an additional (economic) justification of male superiority--filthy lucre.  Men spend their wealth maintaining women, so women owe their obedience to men.  Like a slaves.