The Polygamist

Imam Idris Sultan was unmarried, and for this reason he approved of polygamy.

He was a religious figure in “this irreligious society” where polygamy was looked down upon. His open advocacy of the practice allowed the impious to label him “a pervert just like us” — a fact that caused him great agitation. He did not think polygamy was a mark of perversion and therefore tried to set forth various arguments as to the benefits of the practice.

He invoked altruism. He identified the vast number of women in the world that were orphaned and suffering and homeless. He thought to himself that if such women could, three or four at a time, be matched up with healthy middle-class males (such as himself), then the world would be a much better place for all.

However, this welfare oriented argument always floundered when he remembered that he lived in a so called “welfare state.”

If he really wanted to help women in trouble, the more appropriate thing to do in such a society wasn’t to marry multiple times, but to become involved in politics, assist in the passage of helpful legislation, or volunteer at the women’s shelter and write grants — in other words, engage in ventures that benefitted all the women, and not just the troubled ones that he was attracted to (which would be very selfish and not at all altruist).

Unable to devise a convincing argument as to the merits of polygamy caused Imam Idris a great deal of despair. If he could not even convince himself about the viability of Islamic polygamy in this day and age, how would he influence his congregants about the more complex things of the faith?

They would turn soft in their practice, and slowly drift towards apostasy, and then he would have to imagine stoning them in his head while publicly assuring them that “in this pluralist age you are free to leave the faith as you please.”

He thought of a solution. He would simply assert that being polygamous was valued in the eyes of God as a form of personal jihad. Nothing complex: just an assertion without any justification. He created an intermediate category of jihad — between the higher and the lower version — where things like polygamy, avoiding usury, opposing the War in Iraq, and voting for Ron Paul fell. Satisfied, he delivered a Friday sermon about the idea.

Following the sermon, a young man with what Philadelphians called “the Sunni beard” came up to him and shook his hand.

“Salam Alaykum, akh!” said the young man.

“Wa Alaykum As Salam Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuhu,” replied the Imam. He always liked it when the young males were lazy about their religiosity because it gave him an opportunity to assert himself over them.

The young man, whose name was Mustafa, realized his error and meekly apologized. His demure behavior prompted the Imam to reach out and touch his frail shoulders. As he touched Mustafa, the Imam’s hands trailed down past Mustafa’s clavicle. Thinking to himself that Mustafa needed to bulk up, the Imam ran his hands down to either side of Mustafa’s waist and squeezed it gently.

“Brother Mustafa,” he scolded. “Your waist is narrow like a woman’s!”

Mustafa’s mouth snapped shut and he squirmed.

Suddenly, the Imam realized his error and let go. He had just implied that he, an unmarried man, knew what a woman’s waist was like. In fact, he had never been with a woman — pre-marital sex was a grave sin. The only way he had even conceived of saying what he said to Mustafa was because when he was eighteen and skinny, someone had grabbed his waist just like that and called him effeminate. The Imam didn’t have a chance to think over these things as Mustafa spoke up.

“Shaykh!” he said. “I find your position that polygamy is a form jihad to be very satisfying. I had always thought about it but as you know I’m just a muqallid. Is this your ijtihad or…”

“Quiet, brother Mustafa,” said the Imam. “With that i word. That is the special word that the liberals use to justify things like homosexuality and fornication…”

“I apologize!”

“It is very important in Islam to strive in the way of Allah Azza Wa Jal,” said Imam Idris vaguely, unwilling to indulge in the theory of the matter.

Brother Mustafa did not relent. “I am simply inquiring whether the Pious Predecessors considered this intermediate jihad that you call it to be fard ‘ayn or…”

“Let me stop you right there,” the Imam put up his hand, suddenly wary that the congregants might be trying to turn his intellectual argument into an issue of jurisprudence. “There are no options when it comes to Islam, you feel me?” He adopted the youthful vernacular to reduce the seriousness that Mustafa had brought to the discussion. “We must never be lazy in the practice of Islam.”

The statement satisfied the young man and he walked away smiling from his reaffirmed views.

Imam Idris smiled as well. One day when this young man, a few years down the road, would be taking his third wife, he would think back to this day and think fondly of the good Imam who convinced him about the advantages of polygamy. The Imam liked the idea that he could bring pleasure to one of the brothers of his faith.

His smile disappeared when he was approached by the homeless brother asking him to make a call for “donations.”

Later in the afternoon, when the Imam had finished leading the ladies halaqa and was enjoying a buttery piece of naan with mango chutney, he thought back to his conversation with Mustafa and suddenly became upset with himself. In retrospect it seemed to him that Mustafa had become convinced about the benefits of polygamy not because of the Imam’s argument but because he had, incorrectly, come to believe that polygamy was required before the eyes of God.

This displeased the Imam. He didn’t want people to engage in polygamy because they wanted merely to please Allah, but because their intellect was convinced as well. 2+2 needed to equal four, not because “that is math!” but because a person’s mind was convinced that it couldn’t equal anything but four, and, in fact, equalling four was better than 2+2 equalling some other number.

For a moment the Imam let himself chuckle. He had managed to bring the number four — like four wives — inadvertently into his thought process.

He had only two courses of action. He could ignore the matter and let Mustafa think what he wanted. Or, he could come with an argument so persuasive, so powerful, that it would be unimpeachable, undeniable.

He tugged at his leather socks, put his feet in boots and began walking towards the university. It had gotten very cold. He wasn’t wearing leggings underneath his thowb. The dark hair on his legs began to prickle and harden, rubbing softly against his inner thigh. He drew his jacket forward as much as he could, but the icy breeze seared into his legs.

Shivering, and still only halfway home, he reached the bookstore. He ducked inside to warm himself. Other people were huddled in the doorway as well, talking on cell-phones. Their presence forced him to go further inside and he was pushed towards the magazine rack — a place he avoided as the covers of the magazines contained various degrees of pornographic filth.

As his eyes ran across the faces and bodies of the various women on the magazines, a sudden smile and a subhanallah came to his lips. Today, for some reason, there was a great deal of variety among the magazine covers. One contained a woman in a swim-suit, but the other one displayed a ballerina, another one an older woman with a wise expression, and yet another displayed the image of a beautiful hijabi sister from Iran.

It occurred to the Imam that all of these were creatures — women — that God had created and put on this earth for a specific purpose. What’s more, He had infused each of them with a certain amount of beauty. Suddenly, the repetitive refrain from Surah Rahman rang out in his mind: “Which of the bounties of your Lord will you then deny?” He nodded to himself and ran to find Mustafa.