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266chapter fiveand as nonsensical as to call a male person an ‘orphan man’ (becausemale orphans are by definition minor boys). In sum, verse 4:127must be understood in connection with the orphan verses 4:2–6because both similarly call upon people to stand up for justice toorphans (children!). To interpret 4:127 in the context of orphanwomen is a mischievous attempt to draw the attention away fromthe true message of the verse.The Application of the Theory of LimitsThe verse of polygyny contains an upper and lower limit whose exactdefinition has to be stated in quantitative and/or qualitative terms.1. Quantitative limits:The purely quantitative calculation is based on the passage ‘marry[…] two or three or four’, starting with the number two, that is,double the number of the first wife. Since a man cannot marryhimself or half a woman, we infer that the lower limit of marriageis one and that the upper limit is four. The separate presentationof each number, ‘marry […] two or three or four’, instead of saying‘marry up to four’ stresses that we are dealing here with wholenumbers, not with fractions, implying a ‘whole’ commitment, notjust a ‘fractional’ 0.9, for example. If we prohibited polygyny completelywe would still be within Allah’s limits as we would legally(and quantitatively) stand on the lower limit (of one). No verse ofthe Book explicitly prohibits us from doing so. If we allowed polygynywith up to four women, we would move between Allah’slimits towards the upper limit (of four). By focusing on a purelyquantitative interpretation of the polygyny verse, traditional Islamiclegislation has done exactly this and has allowed polygynous marriageswithout any qualitative considerations. The only qualificationpermitted, with regard to the conditional clause ‘but if youfear that you shall not be able to deal justly’, was to demand a balancedtreatment of all co-wives. As this condition is difficult tomeet, some schools of law came to the conclusion that one wifeshould be the norm and that only in exceptional circumstances (seeabove) should polygynous relationships be permitted. 2525According to all four legal schools, it is permissible for a man in normal circumstancesto have up to a maximum of four wives at a time, provided that equality,such as the provision of food and maintenance as well as parity in overnight stays,