Polygamy and Different Cultures

Tue, Mar 13, 2007 admin

In the west polygamy is absolutely not followed now in communities. Polygamous cultures are extinct due to the continuous development of certain universal standards.

Polygamy and Christianity

Several Christian religions including the Protestants that were in favor of polygamy are now in favor of monogamous relationships due to the multifaceted problems in society, civil rights and legal systems. It is not practical in today’s world to support such difficult and disparaging practice of acquiring polygamous marriages.

However, there are still some cultures and group of people that are continuing to promulgate the traditions concerning polygamy. The fundamentalist branches of the Mormon Church, are indulged in polygamous marriages even at the present time.

The Church of the Latter Day Saints used to consistently advocate polygamous principles as it was told in the bible. They in fact prepared a statement of this philosophy in 1852 and sustained with the tradition until 1890. In 1980 the practice of polygamous marriages was ultimately deprecated. Nevertheless, there are some members of this community who still practice this custom despite of Mormon’s warning of communal boycott.

Like Mormons, Jewish community too has to vie with incessant polygamous observances even after it was banned from their community. The major problem is that that the Jewish families who reside in Muslim communities, want to get involved in practices of polygamy as Muslims can marry more than one woman under some conditions.

Asian ladyIslamic culture

According to Islam, a man can marry four women at the same time, but it is not something that they have to follow.

There are certain cases where if there are a lot of women who need social and financial support and cannot support themselves, then and only then Islam gives a man the right to marry another woman. This is if and only if he can fulfill the rights of the two women duly as it is his duty to give them equal rights.

If you read Islamic history, there was a time after a war where a lot of women were left alone and their husbands or families were no more left to take care of them.

In order to take care of them, and to support them socially and financially men married those women.

You cannot engage in polygamy at your heart’s will in Islam, so many people mistake this concept and allegedly say that Muslim communities are responsible for polygamy. It is not true and you can read Islamic history to clear such vagueness and even today or in the ancient times monogamy is and was practiced by Muslims.

Polygamy within Africa

There are many African communities where polygamy is being practiced even today. But, there are some African countries who want to correct their traditions and systems due to the rapid growth of population and brisk spread of HIV.

There are several reasons for the practice of polygamy in Africa. The first reason for polygamy was due to the high newborn mortality rate and the comparatively undersized life period of both men and women.

In addition, the African people are mostly agriculturists, so men were fewer in percentage than woman, so they wanted to reproduce more children, especially boys to help them in farming activities. Another skeptic reason for having numerous wives is that a man is considered to be of a high status if he has more wealth, more wives, and more children than anybody else.

In order to sum it up, there are many societies that practiced and still practice polygamy. It is becoming extinct in this day and age, due to several reasons and frankly it is very unrealistic to think that you can provide for more than one wife and a number of children and polygamy will soon be completely eradicated from every society. One can hope for the best.

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