Polygamy - Marrying More than One Women

Islam is a way of life consonant with nature, providing human solutions to complex situations and avoiding extremes. This characteristic of Islam can be observed most clearly in its stand concerning the taking of more than one wife. Islam permits Muslim marriage to more than one woman in order to resolve some very pressing human problems, individual as well as social.

Many peoples and religions prior to Islam permitted marriage to a host of women, whose number reached tens and sometimes hundreds, without any condition or restriction. Islam, on the other hand, laid down definite restrictions and conditions for polygamy.

With regard to the restriction, it limited to four the maximum number of wives a man might have. When Ghailan al-Thaqafi accepted Islam, he had ten wives. "Choose four of them and divorce the rest,'' the Prophet (peace be on him) told him (Reported by al-Shafi'i, Ahmad, al-Tirmidhi, Ibn Majah, Ibn Abi Shaybah, al-Darqutni, and Bayhaqi.). Similarly, some men who had eight (Reported by Abu Daoud in his Musnad.) or five wives at the time of embracing Islam were told by the Prophet (peace be on him) to retain only four (Reported by Ahmad, al-Darimi, Ibn Hibban, al-Hakim, and the compilers of Sunan (Abu Daoud, al-Nisai, and Ibn Majah).)

The case of the Prophet (peace be on him), who himself had nine wives, was exempted from this by Allah for the sake of da'wah (the propagation of the message of Islam) during his lifetime and because of the need of the Muslim ummah after his death.