The Times of India
Wife espouses polygamy, Arabs debate AP[ FRIDAY, AUGUST 26, 2005 12:25:40 AM ]
CAIRO: Hayam Dorbek wants her husband to get married. Again. In urging him -- and the rest of Egypt -- to be more open to polygamy as approved by Islam, the 42-year-old journalist has set off a lively debate in her country and the rest of the Arab world tuning in on satellite TV.
Dorbek says she felt her work was keeping her so busy that her husband needed a second wife. She says he refused, "but my son is helping me promote the idea," she said. She feels the Islamic concept of polygamy is the answer to many of Egypt's social ills. She has written articles with titles like "One wife is not enough", and has helped form an association called 'Al-Tayseer', or facilitation, that promotes polygamy.
Some are furious, saying it makes Egypt look like conservative Saudi Arabia and is bad for women -- tantamount to "displaying them in a slaves' market," according to Nihad Aboul-Qomsan, head of the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights. The debate exemplifies the tug-of-war between conservatives and liberals in a country that is brimming with Western symbols and ideas while also becoming more Islamic.
Many revivalists of Islam have taken up a modern rhetoric, presenting themselves as an alternative to a decadent West. Dorbek recasts the license that Islam gives men to marry up to four women and gives it a modern flavour. "I'm calling for women's rights: their right to get married even if to a married man," Dorbek said. Polygamy is a "license from God to stabilise society and solve its problems."
To familiar problems of family life such as adultery and divorce, Dorbek adds "spinsterism" -- women remaining single into their 30s, and being possibly stigmatized as easy prey for men or temptresses preying on men for sex.
Her solution: hitch single, widowed or divorced women to married men who can financially support more than one family.