Now first of all conceive a situation where a lady is also, ladies are also permitted and men are also permitted to marry more than once. Now how large the family would become, first conceive that. If each husband marries four wives and each wife has four husbands, so how big the family would be and how unmanageable. Can you conceive of such a family? If each wife has married four times and each husband has married four times, how can you manage things? Then who would be responsible for children? Whose children can they be counted?
In case of four wives, there can be no doubt about which children belong to which mother. But there being four husbands, nobody knows. Can you? I have no answer to that, partly because I haven’t followed all that you have said because I have been overruled by presence. So Inshallah you will understand. I think people have understood it. Aha, you can follow it. But this is a counter question. You put it to your wife as I have said. I hope she is listening to the tape, not to this discourse. Isn’t she? She is in the hall? No she is not.
Then you can make her listen to the cassette and find out the answer. And Inshallah then I will pursue it further if necessary. I said this because the other aspects of the philosophy of this injuncture have already been explained in so many places by so many religious scholars. Also I have answered this question at various question and answer sessions, differently. But in view of your wife’s question, I have thought of this approach as well.
This is something which I once used against a Christian student who just wouldn’t listen to the philosophy and this and that. He wanted a crisp, you know, mouth shut up answer, you know, that sort of thing. So when I posed this question to him, he couldn’t answer anything, you know. He had to admit, OK, leave it alone.
