A Dictionary of Islam Being a cyclopedia of the...

In the Ain-i-Akbari, it is related that a certain Mujtahid, or enlightened doctor, married eighteen wives, for he rendered the Arabic word mas̤na, “double,” and read the text already quoted, “Marry whatever women you like two and two, three and three, and four and four.” And in the same work it is said that another learned Maulawī married eight wives, because he read the verse—“two + three + four = nine”!

Al-Baiẓāwī, the Jalālān, and other Sunnī commentators, are all agreed that the true reading of the verse limits the number of lawful wives to four. The Shīʿahs also hold the same opinion, but they sanction Mutʿah, or “temporary marriages.” [MUʿTAH.]

In the face of the united testimony of Islām founded upon the express injunctions of the Qurʾān, Syed Ameer Ali has the audacity to state in his Critical Examination of the Life and Teachings of Muhammad, p. 223, that “the greatest and most reprehensible mistake committed by Christian writers, is to suppose that Muhammad either adopted or legalised polygamy. The old idea of his having introduced it—a sign only of the ignorance of those who hold it—is by this time exploded, but the opinion that he adopted and legalised the custom is still maintained by the common masses as by many learned in Christendom. No belief can be more false”!

“Muhammad restrained polygamy by limiting the maximum number of contemporaneous marriages, and by making absolute equity towards all obligatory on the man. It is worthy of note that the clause in the Qurán, which contains the permission to contract four contemporaneous marriages is immediately followed by a sentence which cuts down the significance of the preceding passage to its normal and legitimate dimensions. The former passage says, ‘You may marry two, three, or four wives, but not more.’ The subsequent lines declare, ‘but if you cannot deal equitably and justly with all you shall marry only one.’ The extreme importance of this proviso, bearing especially in mind the meaning which is attached to the word ‘equity’ (ʿadl) in the Quranic teachings, has not been lost sight of by the great thinkers of the Moslem world. Even so early as the third century of the era of the Hijra during the reign of al-Mâmûn, the first Motazalite doctors taught that the developed Quranic laws inculcated monogamy. And though the cruel persecutions of the mad bigot, Mutawwakil, prevented the general diffusion of their teachings, the conviction is gradually forcing itself on all sides, in all advanced Moslem communities, that polygamy is as much opposed to the Islâmic laws as it is to the general progress of civilised society and true culture. In India especially, this idea is becoming a strong moral, if not a religious conviction, and many extraneous circumstances in combination with this growing feeling are tending to root out the existence of polygamy from among the Mussulmans.

A custom has grown up in that country, which is largely followed by all classes of the community, of drawing up a marriage deed containing a formal renunciation, on the part of the future husband, of any right or semblance of right which he might possess or claim to possess to contract a second marriage during the existence of the first. This custom serves as a most efficacious check upon the growth and the perpetuation of the institution of polygamy. In India more than ninety-five per cent. of Muhammadans are at the present moment, either by conviction or necessity, monogamists. Among the educated classes, versed in the history of their ancestors, and able to compare it with the records of other nations, the custom is regarded with disapprobation, amounting almost to disgust. In Persia, according to Colonel Macgregor’s statement, only two per cent. of the population enjoy the questionable luxury of plurality of wives. It is earnestly to be hoped that before long a general synod of Moslem doctors will authoritatively declare that polygamy, like slavery, is abhorrent to the laws of Islam.” (Personal Law of the Muhammadans, p. 28.)

Syud Ahmad Khan Bahadur, in his essay, Whether Islam has been beneficial or injurious to Society in general, on the contrary, defends the institution of polygamy as divine, and quotes John Milton, Mr. Davenport, and Mr. Higgins, as Christian writers who defended the practice.

“The defence of polygamy has been undertaken from various points of view, and with varying degrees of insight and of earnestness. But one cannot detect much progress among its defenders. F. W. Newman has nothing to say in its favour which had not previously been suggested by Voltaire; nothing, we may say, which does not occur to anyone who wishes to present the argument for a plurality of wives. It is somewhat late in the day to be called upon to argue for monogamy as abstractly right. Speculators like Aristotle (Econ. i. 2, 8), who have viewed the subject both as statesmen having a regard to what is practicable and will conduce to social prosperity, and as philosophers reasoning from first principles, have long ago demanded for their ideal society, not only monogamy, but also that mutual respect and love, and that strict purity and modesty, which polygamy kills. Let us say briefly that the only ground conscience recognises as warranting two persons to become one in flesh is that they be, first of all, one in spirit. That absolute surrender of the person which constitutes marriage is justified only by the circumstances that it is a surrender of the heart as well, and that it is mutual. To an ideal love, polygamy is abhorrent and impossible. As Mohammed himself, in another connection, and with more than his usual profundity, said, ‘God has not put two hearts in you.’

This is the grand law imbedded in our nature, and by which it is secured that the children born into the world be the fruit of the devoted surrender of one human spirit to another; by which, in other words, it is secured that love, the root principle of all human virtue and duty, be transmitted to the child and born in it. This is the beneficent law expressed in monogamy, and this law is traversed and robbed of its effects precisely in so far as even monogamous marriages are prompted by fleshly or worldly rather than by spiritual motives. The utilitarian argument Mr. Lecky (Hist. European Morals, vol. ii. p. 295) has summed up in three sentences: ‘Nature, by making the number of males and females nearly equal, indicates it as natural. In no other form of marriage can the government of the family, which is one of the chief ends of marriage, be so happily sustained; and in no other does the woman assume the position of the equal of man.’ But we have here to do only with Mohammedan apologists, and their reasonings are somewhat perplexing; for they first maintain that nature intended us to be polygamists (see Syud Ahmad’s Essay, p. 8; Syud Ameer Ali’s Crit. Exam., p. 225), and then, secondly, declare that ‘the greatest and most reprehensible mistake committed by Christian writers is to suppose that Mohammed either adopted or legalised polygamy.’ Probably the most that can be said for Mohammed in regard to this matter, is that he restricted polygamy, and that its abolition was impossible and unsuitable to the population he had to do with.

“The allegation, however, that Mohammed confined polygamy within narrower limits than the Arabs had previously recognised, though true, is immaterial. For, in the first place, he restricted polygamy indeed in others, but not in his own case; and thus left upon the minds of his followers the inevitable impression that an unrestricted polygamy was the higher state of the two.

“In the second place, while he restricted the number of lawful wives, he did not restrict the number of slave-concubines. In the third place, his restriction was practically of little value, because very few men could afford to keep more than four wives. And, lastly, as to the principle, he left it precisely where it was, for as Mr. Freeman justly observes (Lectures, p. 69): ‘This is one of the cases in which the first step is everything. The difference between one wife and two is everything; that between four and five thousand is comparatively nothing.’

“And if the principle be defended as at least relatively good, nothing is to be urged against this as matter of fact; although the circumstance has been overlooked, that already very many thousands of Christian Arabs had found it quite possible to live in monogamy. But that polygamy is not incompatible with a sound, if not perfectly developed, morality, and with the highest tone of feeling, no one who has read the history of Israel will be disposed to deny. That it may suit a race in a certain stage of its development, and may in that stage lead to purer living and surer moral growth than its prohibition would, may be granted. But necessarily the religion which incorporates in its code of morals such allowances, stamps itself as something short of the final religion.”

Prayer is the second of the five foundations, or pillars, of practical religion in Islām, and is a devotional exercise which every Muslim is required to render to God at least five times a day, namely, at the early morning, midday, afternoon, evening, and night.

See Sūratu ʾr-Rūm (xxx.), 17: “Glorify God when it is evening (masāʾ) and at morning (ṣubḥ),—and to Him be praise in the heavens and the earth,—and at afternoon (ʿashī), and at noon-tide (z̤uhr).” (But all commentators are agreed that masāʾ includes both sunset and after sunset; and, therefore, both the Mag͟hrib and ʿAshīyah prayers.)

Sūrah xx. 130: “Put up then with what they say; and celebrate the praise of thy Lord before the sunrise, and before its setting; and some time in the night do thou praise Him, and in the extremes of the day, that thou haply mayest please Him.”

“The divine injunctions for prayer were originally fifty times a day. And as I passed Moses (in heaven, during my ascent), Moses said to me, ‘What have you been ordered?’ I replied, ‘Fifty times!’ Then Moses said, ‘Verily your people will never be able to bear it, for I tried the children of Israel with fifty times a day, but they could not manage it.’ Then I returned to the Lord and asked for some remission. And ten prayers were taken off. Then I pleaded again and ten more were remitted. And so on until at last they were reduced to five times. Then I went to Moses, and he said, ‘And how many prayers have you been ordered?’ And I replied ‘Five.’ And Moses said, ‘Verily I tried the children of Israel with even five, but it did not succeed. Return to your Lord, and ask for a further remission.’ But I said, ‘I have asked until I am quite ashamed, and I cannot ask again.’ ” (See Ṣaḥīḥu Muslim, vol. i. p. 91.)

This Ṣalāt, or liturgical service, has thus become one of the most prominent features of the Muḥammadan religion, and very numerous are the injunctions regarding it which have been handed down in the traditions. There are various minor differences amongst the numerous sects of Islām regarding the formula, but its main features are alike in all countries.

It is absolutely necessary that the service should be performed in Arabic; and that the clothes and body of the worshipper should be clean, and that the praying-place should be free from all impurity. It may be said either privately, or in company, or in a mosque—although services in a mosque are more meritorious than those elsewhere.