Islam’s naturalism, its insistence on the fitrah [the pure and natural soul] and our authentic belongingness to the natural order, has ensured the conservation of this creational norm within the moral context of the Shari`ah. Polygamy, in the Islamic case, appears as a recognizably Semitic institution, traceable back to an Old Testament tribal society frequently at war and unequipped with a social security system that might protect and assimilate widows into society. However, it is more universal. Classical Hinduism permits a man four wives, and there are many Christian voices, not only Mormons, who are today calling for the restoration of polygamy as part of an authentically Biblical lifestyle.

Faced with the failure of normative Western marriage and relationship codes, a growing number of contemporary thinkers are turning to this primordial institution for possible guidance. Phillip Kilbride, professor of anthropology at Bryn Mawr, aroused much interest with his recent book Plural Marriage for Our Times: A Reinvented Option. Audrey Chapman has written a more popular study entitled Man-Sharing: Dilemma or Choice, while in 1996, the women’s rights activist Adriana Blake published her Women Can Win the Marriage Lottery: Share Your Man with Another Wife.

These studies, from their different perspectives, present three major ethical arguments for polygamy. First, the institution can, as its origins suggest, allow the reintegration into a post-war society of bereaved women, of whom a tragically large number now exist around the globe.

Second, it can work to the advantage of women. An extended family is created, which allows one woman to go to work, while the other cares for the children. The juggling of work and children, which is a besetting hazard of modern relationships, is thus neatly averted; showing polygamy as a frankly liberative option for women. Its advantages for children, also, have been amply documented by the recent research of Carmon Hardy, who shows the strong degree of family bonding and much lower incidence of crime among offspring of Mormon polygamists at the turn of the present century.

Third, polygamy is realistic; and from the Muslim perspective, we would identify this as a principal argument given the Shari`ah’s general realism. Muslims point out that modern Western societies are, in practice, far more polygamous than Muslim ones, the difference being that in the West, the second relationship exists outside any legal framework. The present heir to the British throne, for instance, has been polygamous, and to traditional Muslims nothing seemed more absurd than that Diana needed to be divorced and a constitutional crisis provoked.

True monotheism, as always, entails realism. Men are biologically designed to desire a plurality of women, and, unless we can carry out some radical genetic engineering work, they will always do so. And when a man has two women simultaneously, the law may either deprive one of the two women of legal rights and social status, as in the modern West, or it can recognize both as legitimate spouses, as in the Shari`ah.

Muslims regard as an absurdity the present arrangement in the West, where consensual relationships of all kinds are allowed and even militantly defended: homosexual, lesbian, and so on, whereas a consensual menage a trois is still regarded as immoral. The last hangover of Victorian morality? In fact, a menage a trois is perfectly acceptable in modern Western law, as long as the parties to it live “in sin” and do not attempt to marry. The absurdity of this position requires no comment.

There are other aspects of the Shari`ah that deserve mention as illustrations of our theme, not least those which have been largely forgotten by Muslim societies. The intersections between the two gender universes are sometimes designed by the Lawgiver as rights of women and sometimes as rights of men. The former category is more frequently omitted from actualized Muslim communities. Frequently, the jurists’ exegesis of the texts is plurivocal. Domestic chores, for instance, appear as an aspect of interior sociality, but this is not identified with purely female space, since they are regarded by some madhhabs, including the Shafi`i, as the responsibility of the man rather than the wife.

`A’ishah was asked, after the Blessed Prophet’s death, what he used to do at home when he was not at prayer, and she replied, “He served his family. He used to sweep the floor and sew clothes” (Al-Bukhari, Adhan, 44). On this basis, Shafi`i jurists defend the woman’s right not to perform housework. For instance, the 14th century Syrian jurist Ibn al-Naqib insisted, “A woman is not obliged to serve her husband by baking, grinding flour, cooking, washing, or any other kind of service, because the marriage contract entails, for her part, only that she let him enjoy her sexually, and she is not obliged to do other than that.”

In the Hanafi madhhab, by contrast, these acts are regarded as the wife’s obligations. Another sufficient reminder of the difficulty of generalizing about Islamic law, which remains a diverse body of rules and approaches. Another important area, which cannot be detailed here, is the law for custody of children. The Hanafis prefer boys to leave the divorced mother at the age of 7 to live with the father; girls remain with her until the menarche. For the Malikis, the boy stays with the mother until sexual maturity (ihtilam), and the girl until her marriage is consummated.