Azad Chaiwala, a Business Youtuber, launched SecondWifedotcom, a matrimonial service for practicing Muslims. The platform is designed to assist women in their quest for a husband by connecting them with men/husbands who are looking for a second, third, or fourth wife.
"We aim to help out those who wish to practice polygamy in the most decent and respectful manner. We have invested a lot of time and money into this project and we strongly believe in it", says their website.
Too many thoughts are runnning through our minds as we write this article. The aim is to be as neutral as possible but don’t certain things make being unbiased, oh so INCREDIBLY HARD?!
One thing that really caught our attention was this quote from the Holy Quran that have right up on their website:
“then marry women of your choice, two or three, or four but if you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly, then only one” - Quran 4:3
While this is obviously completely true, we feel they might have taken it out of context to take their initiative forward. Yes, you can marry upto 4 times in islam but it isn’t supposed to be as random as they’ve made it sound. Alot of things need to be taken into consideration before one can take the decision of stepping into a second marrige.
Permission from wife or wives, making sure you treat all your wives with equal amount of love and respect and most importantly, making sure your wealth is distributed amongst all of them equally to avoid any sort of disagreement and/or troubles in the future.
The order in which you choose your wives, for example, widows and divorced women first! The reasoning and situation - all of these things matter way more than they would like to highlight.
Not giving importance to the prerequisites and plainly advertising the idea of second, third and fourth marriages using a quote from the Holy Quran makes it seem as though they are using religion to their convenience. And this isn’t the first time we have seen something of this sort happen.
We spoke to a couple of people and here’s what they had to say:
“Basically it's become a routine joke for all men, doosri shadi jokes are all over the place. And they support it by saying it's Sunnah. But what they fail to remember is that every marriage that the prophet did, had purpose and reasoning behind it. Not a single one was based on physical needs. So when we propagate polygamy for the sake of decreasing zinnah we in essence commit a deep insult to Islam and the Prophet Pbuh. And its done so casually and frequently that they present to the world a disastrous image of Islam. The purpose of multiple marriages is to support women who need shelter and protection which is not available to them from their Mehrams due to whatever reason. Otherwise for reducing zinnah and badkaari one shadi should be sufficient!” - Ammara Khalid
“Most men, especially Pakistani men, (and i say most because not all men) cannot emotionally support and make an effort to understand their own wife and yet believe they deserve 4 wives. Absurdity at its peak in my opinion.” - Amna Shahab
“Theek hai. Yeh sunnah hai. Humne maan liya, magar phir baaqi huqooq? Aurat ka mard pe haq? Wahn pe islam nahi sirf ek mard ka aurat pe superior hona yaad rehta hai sab ko!” - Fareeha Ishtiaq
“Doosri shaadi itna bara koi masla nai hai. Jinhe karni hai karlein. Baad ki baad main dekhi jayegi” - Maria Khan
“Men shouldn’t have to ask their wives for permission to get married. This app is a cool initiative for people who need it!” - Rohaan Siddiqui
“But why 4 wives? why not love the 1 you have fully! why would you want to marry again only for the sake of marrying” - Ihsan Ahmar
“Being a man i genuinely believe unless you don’t have an extremely solid reason to get into another marriage, you really shouldn’t. Our Prohet PBUH had all the qualities and more a man must possess to keep a marriage or multiple marriages successful. If you cant be just and equal with your wives and if you dont have a very good reason to go ahead with it, please dont do it!” - Arish Qureshi
These were just a few individuals we could directly get in touch with. There are a gazillion more opinions out there that have been stated/shared regarding this topic. Take a look: