Scholarly Articles on Muslim Polygamy in the U.S.?

[Sad ibn Abu Waqqas]

Salam 'Alaykum,

Does anyone know of any scholarly articles on the subject of Muslim polygamy in the U.S.? I have a student (I am a professor at a college here in the U.S.) who is writing a very good paper on polygamy as practised by Muslims here. This student, although she is a non-Muslim, has written a very sympathetic and well thought out research paper on polygamy, but she needs more scholarly sources.

Wa al-Salam,

[Omar HH]

Wouldn't polygamy be haraam in the U.S. because Muslims must follow the law of the land. And taking a second wife is not a necessary part of the faith?

[Mossy]

Most of the work I've seen done on polygamy in a Western style scholastic sense has been done by the various Islamic women's groups. Not sure where I kept those links..

http://www.islamicity.com/mosque/w_islam/poly.htm

Also a few on themodernreligion.com somewhere if I can recall.. Zawaj.com?

Jamal Badawi wrote a piece on this too..

Erm - Western scholars or Islamic scholars?

[Sad ibn Abu Waqqas]

Wouldn't polygamy be haraam in the U.S. because Muslims must follow the law of the land. And taking a second wife is not a necessary part of the faith?

That's interesting: of course, the people engaging in polygamy are not legally married according to the laws of the land...rather they have entered into a contract between them which does not have the status of "marriage" according to the secular authorities. However, if all the conditions are fulfilled it will be a valid marriage under Islamic law, I should think. Whether it breaks the law of the land is a matter that only someone qualified in American law could answer.

I'm not totally satisfied with the answer I just gave, but it's the best I can do right now.

Wa al-Salam....

[Mossy]

Ah. Found the one I was looking for.

http://www.zawaj.com/articles/women_jc.html, section on polygamy was good
http://www.zawaj.com/articles.html has more, just search on the page - some more relevant than others (specially those in the polygyny section)

Multiple marriage with only the first being a legal civil marriage breaks the condition of the husband dealing equitably with his spouses.

[Omar HH]

You know I don't really see this happening anymore that much. In Syria everyone has just one wife now-a-days that i've met. There are some people in the older generations who had 2 or 3 moms, but most people just have one wife.

Also Syria's been moving more towards a semi-dating way of marriage now i.e. a guy and girl meet through college or some other place and then make a promise - the girl promises she'll reject all marriage proposals until the boy comes - and the boy promises he will propose in a certain time peroid.

At least this is what i've seen from smaller towns - not Damascus or anything like that.

[IlyasLahoz]

Multiple marriage with only the first being a legal civil marriage breaks the condition of the husband dealing equitably with his spouses.
assalaam 'alaikum Sidi,

Co-incidentally, I've recently been thinking this exact topic. (It's a real-life issue for a close friend) and I find myself coming to the same conclusion as you, except for the exception; namely that a woman can waive some of her marital rights (such as allowing the other wife more time with the husband, etc).
If I'm right about this, and in all honesty I haven't done enough research nor asked the appropriate people about it, but if I am, then I think the next question becomes whether the second wife was pressured or coerced into aceepting such conditions. So maybe it's not so cut and dry, (though at a minimum, it does present some complex questions.)

All of this to say that, should you have any, please do post your further thoughts (and if possible any actual scholarship on the subject).
May Allah reward you with much Good Sidi,
wasalaam 'alaikum

[Mossy]

There's some material on this in the multiple wives threads in the gender areas..

The level of waiving of the rights is an interesting one as it can go to the extreme of, say, misyar marriage. But that's for another thread - perhaps take this type of discussion to the aforementioned thread or create another one.