Voices of Islam (142 page)
Authors: Vincent J. Cornell
Even though all Sunni legal schools continue to uphold the guardian’s powers in contracting the marriage of a female ward, the realities of modern life have begun to supersede the traditional practice of arranged marriages in Muslim countries. Men and women now meet and choose each other through personal contact in universities, in the workplace, through mutual friends, or even on the Internet. Furthermore, modern legislation in most Muslim countries now forbids compulsion in marriage. This is not to say that parental guidance in the choice of a spouse will disappear completely. On the contrary, professional and well-educated Muslims continue to allow their parents to arrange marriages for them. Certain cultural norms persist, although these too are subject to modifi For example, a Lebanese friend of mine, when discussing contemporary marriage practices among Lebanese Muslims, noted that parents sometimes ignore the requirement of ‘‘sufficiency’’ or ‘‘suitability.’’ Instead of having their daughters marry men of equal or higher social status, they prefer their daughters to marry ‘‘one notch down,’’ as this supposedly guarantees the wife an upper hand in the marriage. Perhaps this practice came about to counter centuries of unfair gender-related practices. In any case, this example demonstrates that in Islam, as in other religious traditions, principles or practices that are supposedly required by the Law can be modifi to suit the reality on the ground.
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THE PERSONAL VOICE: GROWING UP IN A POLYGYNOUS HOUSEHOLD
I grew up within a polygynous household in India. My father’s fi wife was unable to have children beyond the first two daughters because of a per- manent injury during her second childbirth. It was her deepest wish to ‘‘give’’ her husband a male offspring; this is a highly desirous goal in South Asian culture, irrespective of one’s religious persuasion. My father’s first wife blamed herself for bringing to an end any prospect for further continuation of my father’s genealogical line. She found this an unbearable prospect and insisted that her husband remarry to give himself a chance to father a son.
Based on her personal testimony, which she often used to narrate to all of my siblings including myself, my father refused to consider her suggestion and never held her responsible for their situation. He was surprised that she would even suggest he remarry because that might endanger her own personal status vis-a`-vis a second wife, who would rise in esteem were she to ‘‘produce’’ a son. An even more important hurdle was that, being Nizari Ismailis, my father and his first wife were governed by the rules related to marriage and divorce enjoined by the Ismaili Constitution, which the Imam of their time, Sir Sultan Mohammed Shah, Aga Khan III, had promulgated.
2
According to the Ismaili Constitution’s interpretation of Muslim Family Law, monogamy was to be the norm practiced by all Ismailis irrespective of their economic or communal standing. However, there were exceptions to this rule that took into consideration issues such as the infertility of the wife. In such a case, an Ismaili man would have to petition the relevant Ismaili social institution for permission to marry a second wife and seek formal permission to do so from his first wife. In my father’s case, this exception clearly did not apply; his first wife had already ‘‘produced’’ two daughters, so infertility was not a factor.
My father tried to mollify his first wife by reminding her that he could not justify a second wife under Ismaili rules. She was not about to give up, how- ever. Despite the fact that she was illiterate and that her official signature was her thumb impression, she appeared before the entire Ismaili Council (a 20- member body) and appealed ‘‘her case’’—not her husband’s—for a second wife. She asserted that if she gave her husband permission to have a second wife, and if this were her honest desire, the Council was obligated to grant her husband permission to remarry. The Council members, considering her interests, reminded my father’s first wife that she may have been acting emo- tionally at the time and that she may later regret her decision. She remained adamant, however, and assured the Council that even if her husband were to abandon her, she would never petition the Council again. Eventually, the Council allowed my father to have a second wife, but only after requiring him to set aside a substantial portion of his wealth for his first wife.
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Voices of Life: Family, Home, and Society
As it turned out, these assets assured her fi ancial independence after my father’s death.
My biological mother was much younger than both my father and his first wife. She was a very young widow from rural Gujarat whose first husband had died very young within months into their marriage, having contracted some fatal disease. She was chosen as a bride by my father’s first wife, who went out of her way to convince my mother and her family that she would never treat her as ‘‘the other woman’’ but rather as a daughter. In any case, it would have been diffi lt for the young widow to find another husband of my father’s standing in that region. They got married and she moved to Mumbai with my father. My father’s household now consisted of both wives living under the same roof with the younger of his two daughters from the first marriage. Although such an arrangement is not unique, it is not a typical situation either, because Islamic law requires separate quarters for each wife. My father’s eldest daughter, who was in fact older than his second wife, was already married at the time. She became pregnant a couple of months before my father’s second wife, so my father became a grandfather and a father almost at the same time.
It must have been because of the fi wife’s deep prayers and intense wishes that the first child from the second wife turned out to be a boy—the only boy among fi children that were born to my mother. The rest of us turned out to be girls! I was the second-to-last child to be born. My younger sister was born seven months after my father died. My mother was two months pregnant at the time of my father’s sudden death from kidney and heart failure. We grew up calling my father’s first wife
Maji,
a term generally used for a grandparent or an elderly person. She was
Maji
and our biological mother was
Mummy.
To this day, I find it incredible that the two wives shared their husband, living under the same roof, for approximately nine years! If that were not baffling enough, they both continued to live together for 30 years after my father’s death, with the younger wife, my
Mummy,
passing away at age 60 in 1992, followed by my
Maji
passing away at age 91 in 1993.
After my father’s death, my biological mother, my
Mummy,
attended to my father’s business every day, despite the fact that she was from one of the smallest villages in Gujarat and had less than a fourth-grade education. She was motivated by the desire to secure her children’s well-being by protecting their inheritance and source of livelihood from being gobbled up by family members and friends. Her other personal
jihad
(struggle for a good cause) was to ensure that her children got a decent education. On his accession to the Imamate in 1957, the Nizari Ismaili Imam, Aga Khan IV, made it clear to his community that he wished to continue the policy of the previous Imam by insisting on the education of all young Ismailis, especially girls. The pre- vious Imam, his grandfather, had been unequivocal about the necessity for educating girls and stated, ‘‘Educate all your children well. However, if you
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have a son and a daughter but have the financial capacity to educate only one child, choose your daughter.’’ The new Imam now wished that parents would doubly commit themselves to providing a high-quality education for their children. Thus, my mother fought hard to enroll us in the best schools, although she occasionally fell prey to scammers who would promise admis- sion for a child in a nearby Catholic school for a certain amount of money. Once they received the money from her, they were never seen again.
As I look back on my early life, I now realize that my two mothers instinc- tively divided the task of raising their children. My
Mummy
went to work, struggled, and fought in the outside world, while my
Maji
stayed at home feeding us and spoiling us with the attention that my
Mummy
did not have time to give us. Was life always stress free and did all things go smoothly? Probably not, for I am sure that there were strong undercurrents of emotion and power struggles between the two women when their husband was alive, and even during the three decades they spent together without him. However, both women chose to continue living together and become a source of support for each other. The younger wife always addressed the older wife respectfully as
Ben,
‘‘sister.’’ For us children, the main inconven- ience was being brought up in a home that could most aptly be described as a perpetual ‘‘open house.’’ Relatives from rural and urban areas of India sent their daughters to marry under my
Mummy’s
watchful eye. There were other relatives too; those living in the Ismaili diasporas of Malaysia, Burma, Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda, regularly descended upon us to ensure that their children ‘‘kept in touch with their roots,’’ continued to speak an Indian language, and married within the culture and the faith.
Growing up in that household, neither the children of the first wife nor the children of the second wife considered themselves as two separate families. I remember two distinct incidents in my life that demonstrate how deeply etched this reality was in my mind. Years later when I settled in Canada, I tried to bring both of my mothers and my half sister from India to live with me. The Canadian Immigration Board made it categorically clear to me that I could sponsor only my ‘‘biological’’ mother and my half sister, who were related to me by blood, but not my
Maji.
I was upset that they did not under- stand our family dynamics, that
Maji
was also my mother, and that it was inconceivable that she would have to stay behind on her own. In the end, I was forced to drop the whole idea. Another time, when I suffered from droopy eyelid syndrome, my first response to the doctor trying to determine whether my genetic background had caused this condition was to say, ‘‘Well, my Mum developed this condition in her seventies.’’ Then I stopped myself in my tracks. This was
Maji,
who could not have transmitted this condition to me because she was not my biological mother!
My objective in sharing these deeply personal experiences with the reader is not to condone, let alone glorify, polygyny in any way. As a Muslim woman, even having grown up in a polygynous household with largely positive
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experiences, I would still find it intolerable for my spouse to consider having a second wife, even if we were living in a country that permitted polygyny. However, I think it is important to share the variety of possible experiences and dynamics that are often subsumed under the generally negative precon- ceptions of polygynous marriages in the West. While understanding the potential for abuse in polygynous marriages, I have also come to appreciate that multiple factors may lead to unconventional relationships or households and that such factors need to be studied in detail. Polygynous marriages should not be dismissed as mere oddities that are prevalent in ‘‘other’’ societies and cultures, while ‘‘our’’ society is considered completely free from such practices. The polygynous relationships among Mormon Fundamentalists who adhere to what is called ‘‘The Principle’’—as depicted in the currently popular U.S. television mini-series
Big Love
—prove that experiences like mine are far from unknown in the West, even in the United States.
NOTES
An ‘‘enemy of the Household of the Prophet’’ would today only include those few extremist Sunni Muslims who consider Shiite Muslims to be unbelievers or here- tics. In the past, this term was used to designate supporters of the Umayyad dynasty of Caliphs, who denied the claim of the family of ‘Ali and Fatima to the leadership of Islam.
Ismailis are adherents of a branch of the Shiite Islam that considers Isma‘il, the eldest son of the Shiite Imam Ja‘far al-Sadiq (d. 765
CE
), as the latter’s successor. Doc- trinally, they follow the guidance of a living guide, an Imam, who governs the Ismaili community by interpreting the sources of Islamic Law and applying them to his com- munity’s contemporary situation. The present Imam of the Nizari Ismailis is Karim Aga Khan, who claims direct descent from the Prophet and is the 49th in line of suc- cession from Prophet Muhammad, through his daughter Fatima and cousin and son- in-law ’Ali.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arabic Sources
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al-Fiqh ‘ala al-madhahib al-khamsa
Beirut, 1960.
The Pillars of Islam
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al Qadi al-Nu‘man
: Vol. II: Mu‘amalat:
Laws Pertaining to Human Intercourse,
translated by Asaf A. A. Fyzee, revised and annotated by Ismail Kurban Husein Poonawala (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004).
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Sources in European Languages
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The Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Modern Islamic World,
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