RIYADH, 11 July 2003 — A college student recently discovered that his father’s marriage to his second wife was illegal under Islam because she was too closely related to the first wife. The couple had been married for 22 years.
The father, a Saudi citizen of Taif, married a Saudi woman who bore four daughters. The man hoped for a son, but his wife presented him with daughter after daughter. Believing that his wife was the reason he did not have a son, he decided to marry another woman, a relative of his first wife’s.
The second wife was the daughter of the first wife’s nephew. No one in the family realized that the first wife was actually the aunt of the second and that it was therefore forbidden for a man to marry them both.
Ironically, to the man’s disappointment, his second wife’s first baby was a girl. His first wife, on the other hand, finally gave birth to the healthy son the man had always wanted.
Years passed and the man was happily married to both women. His first wife had five girls and three boys and his second wife three girls and two boys.
After being married for 22 years, the man’s first son by his first wife discovered that his father’s marriage to his second wife was not permitted according to Islamic law. The student consulted several religious scholars and sheikhs and told them the full story, revealing the relationship between his father’s two wives. The religious authorities assured him that his father’s marriage to his second wife was illegal.
After the family had learned the shocking news, the man’s first wife — who had been married to him for 35 years — decided to sacrifice her happiness for her husband’s happiness with his second wife. She asked him to divorce her so that he could then remarry his second wife once the conditions for it to be legal under Islam had been fulfilled.
