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264chapter fiveThis is the reason Allah revealed the second part of the verse inwhich people are advised about the pitfalls of polygyny and are urgedto stay monogamous. Some exegetes thought that this refers to thedanger that in a polygynous marriage a husband might not give hisseveral co-wives the same conjugal rights. However, the verse is notabout equal sexual satisfaction of co-wives but about equality interms of social and economic justice. The verse deals, after all, withthe issue of orphaned children, not with marital problems, since itdiscusses the question of how to treat orphans justly (that is, equalto the husband’s own children). The verse ends with an admonitionto avoid injustice by not committing yourself to a polygynous marriage(‘to prevent you from [having too great of a burden] [all§ta#ålå]…’, that is from having too many dependents to care for).The verse of polygyny was intended to solve a crisis in the nascentIslamic community. The Arabian society of the seventh century wasexhausted by the many wars that were fought in defence of the newreligion, and the streets of Mecca and Medina were full of orphanedchildren who had lost their fathers on the battlefields. In those difficultyears, Allah’s revelation of the polygyny verse was a great relieffor a society that did not know orphanages or state-sponsored charitiesfor children. The polygyny verse should better be called the verseof adoption because it basically aims at regulating the process of adoptingorphaned children into existing families. It does not deal withthe marital issue of polygyny as such.The danger is that this verse is read in isolation from the historicalcircumstances of its revelation and is interpreted as Allah’s eternalorder to unconditionally marry up to four wives regardless of thesocial or historical context (e.g., regardless of whether orphaned childrenexist or not). It would be extremely irresponsible to allow thepractice of polygyny in a society in times of peace when there is nosignificant numerical imbalance between men and women, wherethe number of widowed women with small children is insignificantlylow, and where there are properly functioning systems of adoptionand care through orphanages. Some fuqah§" have fabricated long listsof reasons why men are allowed to marry more than one wife. Theyhave said, for example, that polygyny could be justified if a womancannot give birth, or if she is chronically ill, or if she has acquiredsome sort of physical or mental disability. These reasons are in ouropinion totally unacceptable and completely against the essence ofAllah’s revelation. We need to ask the fuqah§", ‘why only women’?