Malaysian women's groups are warned not to attack polygamy

By Kazi Mahmood, IOL Southeast Asia Correspondent

KUALA LUMPUR, January 7 (IslamOnline) - Women's groups in Malaysia Tuesday, January 7, were warned not to oppose the move by the government run state in Perlis to make it easier for Muslim men to take additional wives, which is making waves in the majority Muslim nation.

The Mufti of Perlis, Datuk Mat Jahaya Husin, warned that groups which were critical of the move on polygamy would be in danger of committing a 'sin’. He added that women denying its legality under Islamic law would do best to hold their tongue.

'Hence it is best to hold your tongue lest you deny the right to polygamy in Islam,' he was quoted as saying in Malaysia's Berita Harian Tuesday.

Though he did not mention any names, local newspapers said his remarks were directed at criticisms by women's groups and Women's Affairs Minister Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, who described the move in favor of polygamy as an insult to women.

Countering the move to make it easier for men to marry more than one woman, Minister Shahrizat Abdul Jalil said she would bring the matter up to the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Islamic Family Law.

The Women and Family Development Ministry which Shahrizat heads said it had agreed with the Perlis Government on the urgent need to standardize Islamic family laws, following the controversy over the ruling on polygamy in the state.

“The lesson to learn from this controversy is the need for uniformity in the law,” she told the local press Monday January 6.

The Mufti said he announced the relaxed rules to prevent the rise in cross border marriages in Thailand by locals who faced stiffer laws preventing them from having a second wife.

Perlis Chief Minister Shahidan Kassin said that his state was “not encouraging polygamy but was trying to accommodate and facilitate” those who already have the intention of taking another wife.

He said these laws had been in existence in Perlis since the 1980s.

The National Council of Women’s Organization (NCWO) submitted a memorandum to Shahrizat and Shahidan, calling for constitutional amendments for a single Sharia (Islamic) law for Muslim families.

“Malaysia is the only country with multiple versions of Islamic laws, under 14 separate state or federal territory jurisdictions,” NCWO president Dr Sharifah Hapsah Syed Hasan Shahabudin said.

State Syariah Court Judge Othman Ismail said the authorities received 99 applications from January to November, against 54 for the whole of 2001.

There were only 19 such applications in 2000, he added.

“We have no records of those who did not solemnize their marriages across the border with the authorities. The figure could be higher,” he added.

Othman said only two applications for polygamy were received by the kadi's office  for the first six days of this year.

“We also received 10 enquiries on the matter from couples, mostly from Kuala Lumpur and Johor,” he said.

Women's group in Kuala Lumpur insisted they will campaign against the relaxation of rules to allow polygamy, adding that polygamy is adding to the numerous social ills facing Malay-Muslim families in the country of 27 million people.

Sixty to Sixty-five percent of the population of the country are of Muslim faith and polygamy is allowed to be practiced but with various conditions imposed on the men in particular.

The state of Terengganu recently amended laws related to polygamy to allow its State Assembly men to marry more than one woman. The state secretariat said the decision was to allow people to take single mothers as wife in order to stabilize divorced families in general.

Terengganu is run by the Party Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS), the largest opposition party in Malaysia. The PAS controls another state, Kelantan, where polygamy is also practiced but with severe penalties imposed on those who abuse the laws.

A woman's group, the Women's Candidacy Initiative, said the cause of the present controversy was the fact that people were not involved in the debate on polygamy.

'Many Islamic scholars have refuted the right of men to practice polygamy, and yet for some reason, most Malaysians don't know this,' said spokesman Zaitun Kasim.

She said countries such as Tunisia banned polygamy, while others such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Morocco and Lebanon allowed marriage contracts, which empowered women to divorce their husbands if they married again.