Q.1. Some people ridicule the practice of having more than one wife, which is permissible in Islam. What answer can we give them?
Q.2. Is it obligatory to start the grand ablution with a normal ablution, or a shower is sufficient?
Thanveer K.
A.1. People will make fun of anything they do not understand, or even anything different from what they have been brought up with. I cannot go through all the arguments that justify the Islamic attitude to polygamy in this column because of the limitation of space. What we need to understand is that many social problems could occur in marriage, and the strict insistence on monogamy makes some of these problems insoluble. The only way to sort out such problems in a moral and fair atmosphere that takes the rights and duties of all concerned into account is to permit polygamy in a limited form as Islam does. Without such permissibility, societies have struggled and eventually had to compromise their moral standards. We need only to look at what is happening today in Western societies, where permissiveness is hailed as a sign of progress when it actually destroys the moral fabric of society. Permissiveness was partly a reaction against the rigidity that prevailed in the 19th century, and up to World War I. Western people thought that it would solve their social problems, but we see today that it leads to many situations that are unfair to husband, wife, girlfriend, and above all to children.
A.2. Grand ablution, which involves taking a bath or a shower in which all one’s body must be washed, is required to remove the state of ceremonial impurity. This applies after the ejaculation of semen when accompanied by desire arousal, and it applies to women at the end of a monthly period, or the end of postnatal discharge. It is recommended to start the process with an ordinary ablution, i.e. wudhu, but if one does not do so, and still washes all one’s body, this is perfectly acceptable and incorporates the wudhu as well.
