The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #133765 Message #3038183
Posted By: Penny S.
22-Nov-10 - 03:57 PM
Thread Name: BS: Polygamy a Protected Practice in Canada?
Subject: RE: BS: Polygamy a Protected Practice in Canada?
From what I have read, the existence of polygyny in Islam began at first by cutting down on the allowed number of wives (though later men used concubines and other relationships to extend their harems). It was also allowed because in the setting up of the religion by warfare, the number of men was reduced, and this made it possible for women to be protected by a man.
While the number of men is less than that of women, this seems reasonable. Where polygyny becomes possible only by reducing the number of men through artificial means, such as creation of eunuchs or expulsion of the young men, it clearly becomes wrong. If polyandry were allowed at the same time, and accepted by the men, this would not be a problem, would it?
I gather that Mormon polygyny started in a similar way because of the deaths of founder members, but it seems to have a "theological" foundation now, with men believing that their place in heaven depends on the number of wives, and women believing that theirs depends on the superiority of the man they are bound to. Polyandry is not going to arise in a religion with those sort of beliefs about the inferiority of women. Young men have to be expelled to allow their elders their "rights". Younger and younger women have to be acquired without choice to extend the herd.
It does not seem to have occurred to anyone that if God had intended us to be polygamous, he would have arranged for a very large difference in the numbers of men and women. Nor that in animals with large harems there is a much greater difference between male and female size than exists between humans.
I think that no state should financially support people who follow such arrangements, or, if it does, it should insist on a liberal education for all its people, including the young women. Human rights mean rights for them, not religions.
The only advantage I can see for sister wives is that they don't have to put up with the selfcentred slob who does not see his wives as helps meet for a man, his equals, created from his side to be an equal, not from his foot to be beneath him, as companions with minds to be met and communed with, as much as they might have to if they were his only chattel. I don't see how the relationships reported from such groups are anything other than slavery, even if the women have been educated differently.
And I hope that, in the next life, far from being the creator of a world where he has the equivalent of the 72 virgins, the men at the heads of these mistaken sects find themselves at first enslaved as they enslaved, while their wives are brought to the realisation of what being fully human means.
Penny - don't know what brought this rant on, but hey....