Polygamy, Family Law, and the Crisis of Governance in Palestine jfi.sagepub.com
Nadia A. Naser-Najjab
Abstract
This study is based on interviews with Palestinian women who experienced polygamous marriages.
An analysis of women’s narratives illuminates the impact of polygamy on both the contemporary
Palestinian family and emerging modalities of governance. By tracing the interrelationships between
marriage laws, gender inequalities, and the impact of statelessness and legal ambiguity on the family
in Palestine, the research contributes to the ongoing debate about women’s rights and the reform of
personal status laws in Palestine. This study analyses the psychology of Palestinian women in
polygamous marriages, their feeling of despair, and the coping strategies they have used within the
guidelines of the societal context. This research also allows the voices of these women to be heard
and their insights on the current personal status law that caused their suffering. The study discusses
the pessimism of these women concerning any change on the institutional and the judicial levels.
Keywords
polygamy, Sharia, personal status law, ijtihaad, Palestinian authority
Introduction
Although there are few reliable recent statistics on the prevalence of polygamy in the West Bank,
Welchman (2004) found that approximately 4.5% of families in the West Bank practiced polygamy in
the mid-1990s. Deputy Chief of Islamic Justice Sheikh Ida’si stated during an interview with this
author: “My own observation1 on polygamy is that it is increasing in the West Bank. We do not have
precise numbers, but we grant secrecy to second marriages and do not provide first wives with
information.”2,3 Although some might argue that this relatively low rate of polygamy does not
warrant calls for legislative reform, current laws and practices leave every married woman in
Palestine prone to psychological and economic distress and insecurity, and thus, potentially
paralyzed by the fear that her husband may take another wife and raise a second family without her
consent.
This research supports wider efforts to evaluate and reform personal status laws in Palestine by
contributing to the debate about the difficulty of granting Palestinian women equal rights in
marriage.4 I argue that guaranteeing women’s rights in the marital relationship is not only a
personal or psychological issue but also a political project that goes to the heart of the urgent need
to foster new categories, roles, and practices of effective and equal citizenship in Palestine. Men’s
legal control over women, as illustrated by an increase, according to Sheikh Ida’si, in polygamous
marriages and by the inability of women to combat their own seemingly unavoidable acquiescence
in these, can subject even the most well-educated and self-confident woman to powerlessness and
despair. According to the women interviewed for this study, existing laws neither reward women for
their services to their families nor protect their children’s long-term interests. The threat that
polygamy poses to the integrity and functioning of the family unit, as the women in this study
understand the meaning of that term—that is, a monogamous marriage and its issue—and to
society as a whole, might also be said to reveal the interface between political and personal crises in
contemporary Palestine. As explained before, polygamy through its interruption of family harmony,
affects the social life as whole.
Method
This study draws on field research conducted in the West Bank in 2009-2010. Its conclusions rest on
data collected during in-depth, structured, and unstructured interviews with women in polygamous
relationships. I interviewed 16 women, conducting 14 face-to-face interviews and 2 interviews by
telephone. The average time allotted for each interview was 2½ hours. Fifteen of the women in the
sample are first wives, and one is a second wife who also experienced the addition of a third co-wife
to her household. The method was inductive and phenomenological.
The selection of interviewees for this study was not random. I found subjects through my personal
relationships and social networks, through wordof-mouth, and from friends and friends of friends.
The majority of the women agreed to be interviewed either because they knew me or trusted the
intermediary contact person. Last but not least, the fact that I am a married Palestinian woman also
facilitated rapport.5 I took all possible measures to insure anonymity and confidentiality. As the
study progressed, it became clear that the interviewing process itself allowed women to express
their feelings and thoughts in a way that they were not otherwise able to do; it gave them an outlet
to express their psychological burdens and frustrations as the majority of women told me. The
experiences of these women dramatically illustrate the deficiencies of Palestine’s personal status
laws, not to mention the dilemma that can be posed for modern attempts at reform of those laws,
by certain statements in Islamic texts concerning the relationship between men and women in
marriage (see Welchman, 1999).
Although the majority of my interviewees were from the Ramallah area, about a third came from
other areas of the West Bank and Gaza. Interviewees constituted a wide spectrum of diverse ages,
professions, socioeconomic backgrounds, and regions. Two of the women interviewed had attained
MA degrees, four held BA degrees, and five had completed high school while the remaining five had
left school after completing the elementary level. Five women worked as employees and
professionals, three worked as cleaners or maids, and the remainder (accounting for one half of the
sample) did not work outside the home at all.
The age difference between women and their husbands ranged from 3 to 8 years. In one case, a wife
was 4 years older than her husband. The husbands’ professions ranged from street vendors to office
employees. Their educational backgrounds also varied, but most had not completed college, and
only one had attained a postgraduate degree. This is an interesting situation in itself for the subject
of this essay, since it might point to the fact that some women have to marry down, educationally,
due to a variety of factors, a possible topic for future research. No significant differences existed
between the ages of the first wives and those of their co-wives, nor were there any marked
differences in first and second wives’ levels of education or professions. All the women interviewed
in this study had children of both genders. All but one of the interviewees were Muslims.6
I designed a questionnaire to analyze the psychological as well as the socioeconomic repercussions
of polygamy. Since the interviews were semistructured, the women were free to talk about their
experiences and to shift from one topic to another freely. Some of the women I interviewed had
been in polygamous marriages for a few years; others only recently learned that they had a co-wife.
Narrative and Contexts
Reform of Personal Status Law was included in the drafting of a new Basic Law in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories following the Declaration of Principles signed in September 1993 (Oslo) and
the interim agreement (Oslo II) in 1995. The late President, Yasser Arafat, initiated an effort to unify
personal status law, women activists, and participating NGOs. The whole project for devising a new
Basic Law was undertaken by a promisingly ecumenical forum; representatives of the two major
religions, Islam and Christianity, were part of the body, together with secular politicians and
members of women’s organizations. The conclusions this body reached guaranteed equality for all
Palestinian citizens before the law, democratic process, and separation of religion and state (Hilal,
2000).
Circumstances, however, often play a much more crucial role in achievement than idealistic
initiators of change imagine. In this case, it is the twin influences of the Israeli occupation and the
consequent rise to power of Hamas that have intervened to scotch the well-laid plans, the latter
development of the two reinforcing the already existing patriarchal structure of the Palestinian
society. The overwhelming and destructive context that has proved an all-but absolute impediment
to reform is the increasingly repressive occupation by Israel, whose policies of socioeconomic
strangulation (Roy, 2004), and above all, the Oslo II deliberate division of the West Bank into
separate areas of A, B, and C to which free access is denied, and in 72% of which the Palestinian
Authority (PA) has virtually no or limited authority, have resulted in a fragmented Palestinian society
whose economy has been devastated and across which contiguous governance is well-nigh
impossible(Roy, 2004; Shehadeh, 1997). Moreover, in 20007 Israel imposed internal closures by
increasing checkpoints between Palestinian villages and cities, which affected the mobility of
Palestinians (Roy, 2004). The growing number of Israeli settlements and bypass roads have alienated
more areas and affected the Palestinian integrity of the land (see Tufakji, 2000).The separation wall
started in 2002 inside the West Bank has further disrupted the continuity of daily life for
Palestinians8 (Ghanem, 2010). Israel, in fact, exercises power of control over Palestinian life, in
security, health, education, mobility, and in economic and administrative affairs,9 resulting in mass
unemployment (Hever, 2010; Roy, 2004). This whole political dispensation has also left the
Palestinian Authority with a limited governmental role and has weakened its institutions and its
ability to implement law.
As Azzouni (2010) claims:
Nonetheless, all discussions about Palestine’s constitution, its laws and their impact on women must
also address the limitations imposed by the Israeli occupation, which heavily influences the ways in
which the PA conducts its affairs, how Palestinians conduct their daily lives and the personal security
of all Palestinians.10
Hamas, the Islamist political party, came to power in Gaza in the 2006 elections as a direct result of
the failure of the Palestinian leadership to deliver what the Oslo Agreement appeared to have
promised (Ghanem, 2010). In 2007, increased internal fighting between Fatah and Hamas led to a
Hamas takeover in Gaza, which created a competitive atmosphere in the divided West Bank and
Gaza.
Moreover, the assumption of power by Hamas solidified into a political platform the Islamization11
of social and political life that had been occurring in the Occupied Territories since 1967. Such a
development clearly impacts on any project for the reform of personal status law, the question of
women’s familial roles now carrying over into the public and political realms of governance, creating
a volatile fault line of debate and conflict over gender, religion, politics, and state formation in
Palestine. Reinforcing the process of Islamization (Jad, 2005) of social and political practice in the
Occupied Territories is the way in which the current incoherence of a divided structure of
governance, coupled with the absence of the Palestinian Legislative Council,12 has created a vacuum
in any authoritative regulation of Palestinian affairs, a vacuum that has been filled by customary law
(Shehada, 2004), which has consequently acquired much greater weight in the governance of the
Occupied Territories13 (Welchman, 2008; World Bank, 2010).
Dr. Fayyad, realizing the limited role of the Palestinian National Authority when he replied to a
question about reforming the laws and enforcing them in the absence of the Legislative Council and
with the Israeli domination, announced: “The government works on lobbying and raising public
awareness about issues related to women’s rights.” Emphasizing the inadequacy of the government
and its weakness in enforcing law, he added: “The problem is with cultural and traditional beliefs
that make laws less respected (than customary practices) along with the fact that government
should take more measures.”14
Even the women’s movement can be seen to have possibly revised any public reiteration of their
initially vigorous demand for equality in the Women’s Charter (1994) and the opening of the Model
Parliament (1998) whose express purpose was, as Halimeh Abu-Soulb from the Women’s Centre for
Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC), explained15: “To simulate a vote on reforming the personal
status law to ensure equal rights for women.”16 The sessions discussed and voted on a range of
fundamental issues addressing the rights of women under personal status law, including rising the
marriage age to 18, increasing the rights of women in Gaza in child custody, and in divorce and
inheritance. The Parliament had even passed a vote to prohibit polygamy, albeit not by a large
majority. But the communiqué issued at the end of the final session simply contented itself with the
usual celebration of women’s role in the fight to save Palestine, a declaration in favor of free speech,
and the need to make personal status law more indigenous in form17 (Johnson, 2004). This leaves
women’s organizations with the burden of initiating and mobilizing programs on their own (Abdo,
1999). WCLAC is leading such efforts in concert with ministries, religious courts, and the police. They
seem to have achieved some progress with certain issues, such as divorce and alimony (nafaqah)
payments18 largely through awareness campaigns at universities, advocacy and educational
programming on local television, and training programs throughout the country. But this progress,
encouraging as it is under the circumstances, hardly matches the aims of their original radical
program. Women’s movements and NGOs of civil society faced a variety of challenges during the
time of codifying the Palestinian personal status law, especially in the peak of period 1995 to 2000.
The problem is that when advocating for legislative changes, women’s organizations come up
against prevailing social mores rooted in seldom-questioned patriarchal ideologies and practices.19
Then the male-dominated structure of the Palestinian Authority mirrors and legitimates the central
role of the father in the Palestinian family (see Abdo, 1999; Jad, Johnson, & Giacaman, 2000; Jamal,
2001; Wing, 2011). According to Welchman (2004), little of radical significance has been achieved to
date, the latest draft of personal status law finalized in 2008 not including any major changes in
favor of women,20 and not even being implemented, such as it is; women’s organizations are still
leading the debate on changing the draft.
Justification of Polygamy
The adverse external environment is reinforced by, and elements in it may indeed be said to have
created, what has been described as a crisis of masculinity among Palestinian men. This is due to the
deteriorating economic and political situation mentioned above. Peteet (1994), for example, argues
that masculinity for Palestinian males, in the first Intifada of 1987, was defined and constructed by
active participation in resisting the Israeli occupation, a resistance that constituted a “rite of
passage” to manhood. In the second Intifada, however, where resistance was carried out by military
groups rather than by the majority of the population, masculinity was defined in civilian terms and
focused on kinship and features of ordinary life related to having a job and a stable income in order
to support a family (Kelly, 2008). However, such stability was rarely achieved, due to the
deteriorating economic and political situation mentioned above.
In a recent report published by the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling and analyzed by
Ladsin (2011), it was claimed that:
as the Palestinian economy continues to deteriorate and more men are unemployed, rates of
domestic violence are climbing. This phenomenon can be explained, in part, because unemployed
men are angry, frustrated and at home. High unemployment makes them unable to fulfill their
responsibilities as providers. Disempowered by these external factors, men may use their power
within the family against women and children. (p. 73)
As a matter of fact, the majority of the women in this study think that sex was the main reason for
their husband’s second marriage, even when their sexual desires were fulfilled in their first
marriages. According to Kelly (2008), males constructed their manhood through marriage as a form
of mundane life, and this might explain the desire of men to become polygamous. Denied the
possibility of being the heroic warrior through realization of the destruction that overwhelmingly
superior Israeli fire power could bring down on their people, and prevented, through unemployment
from fulfilling the male role of provider for the family, it is possible to construe polygamy as the one
avenue through which they could attempt to achieve an ideal of manhood. And an examination of
the pro-polygamy argument of some of the official religious establishment lends indirect support to
this theory, since so many diffuse and disparate reasons are given to justify the practice of
polygamy, most of which never appeared in Qu’ran (see Sidqi, 1986; Wadud, 1999), that clearly
there is no reason at all, other than a male wish to retain their power as represented in sexuality,
come what may. Thus, Deputy Chief of Islamic Justice Sheikh Yousif Ida’si in an interview,
enumerating the justifications for polygamy:
There are many reasons, such as fear of spinsterhood. Protection is another reason. The difficult
economic and political situations are other reasons. Fear of seduction in all forms, including incest, is
also a reason. Some men remarry to tame and discipline the first wife. Others like to change their
social status; for example, if the first wife is not educated, then a man looks for an educated one.
And this kind of diffuse argumentation is echoed in the opinions of the husbands of the women I
interviewed. For example, one husband told his wife that he was merely “looking for a tall
woman,”21 another that he wanted more children, while she was pregnant. Yet another told his
wife that she was not educated and thus not good enough for him. One woman related that her
husband told her (after 22 years of marriage), “You are a failure in sex.” He then told her “the
kitchen drawers are untidy.” Another woman related that her husband told her that he was “tired of
my worn-out vagina.”22 Direct evidence that polygamy may originate in little more than the need
for male sexual reassurance is the evidence of one woman whose husband announced to her: “I am
the king here, you have to race to please me,” whereas another’s husband used to tell her, “I love it
when you and the co-wife argue, I know that you both will try your best to satisfy my needs.” In
another case, a husband told his wife that the only reason for his second marriage was to follow the
Sunnah, saying: “Polygamy was an obligation.” Although he deemed his first wife perfect, he
believed that he had to marry again “so as to follow the instructions of the Prophet.” Hiyam Kakour,
who oversees cases of women seeking legal help, confirmed:
Men claim all sorts of problems with their wives to justify the additional marriage, such as the wife is
not obedient, not clean, not ethical, or that she is ill. Men use every excuse to accuse their wives of
being faulty and not good for them, and the law allows that with no restrictions.23
A full consideration of the question of damaged masculinity in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is
beyond the remit of this essay, but assuredly makes another worthwhile topic for future research.
What can be commented here, however, is that such claims as those made above by men, which
undermine their wives’ feelings, are fed by the media, especially soap operas, the subject of
discussion in the next section.
Media and Polygamy
The media, as in any modern society, play a vital role in influencing social attitudes, in this case
reinforcing masculine need by portraying polygamy simply as an exciting and amusing way of
satisfying male desire, with no other justification required, an escapist male sexual fantasy that can
act powerfully on men deprived of every other avenue to assertion of masculine strength. Women in
this study are aware that local and regional Arab media portray women and their personal, political,
and social possibilities negatively. In particular, they cited soap operas as creating unrealistic myths
about women and marriage. These programs have very wide audiences, especially during the
Muslim month of Ramadan, when millions watch soap operas and the plots become the discussion
of social gatherings. A popular soap opera influencing Arab audiences is the Hajj Mutwali Family
(Mikhail, 2004),24 a situation comedy. This soap opera depicts a wealthy man (Hajj Mutwali) with
four wives, all of whom he is able to provide for equitably. The women in this study thought that Hajj
Mutwali became a model that many men wanted to emulate. Women were critical of the program
and thought that the harmony between Mutwali’s wives was an illusion, but men held up the
program as a model of reconciliation between wives. One woman told me, “After seeing the Hajj
Mutwali soap opera, at least 10 men in this refugee camp re-married.”25 Another woman thought
that: “Hajj Mutwali distorted the reality of polygamy and encouraged men to practice it.” One
woman said of her husband:
He used to watch Hajj Mutwali and say to me that he is like Hajj Mutwali. He said to me, “You should
learn from the wives of Hajj Mutwali.” At the same time, when my son cursed his second wife once,
he asked him to get out of the car and it was raining. This is the reality.
The woman who had been both a second wife and then a co-wife of a third wife said: “My husband
used to enjoy watching Hajj Mutwali and used to say to me and the co-wife that we should learn to
be like Mutwali’s wives. I lived this situation, it will never happen in reality.” Another woman told
me: “Hajj Mutwali did not reflect reality. My husband rejected polygamy and divorced the co-wife
after six months. At present, he even advises men not to practice it.” The majority of women
thought that the media, in general, encourage men to intimidate their wives by comparing them
with the women on television (Yamani, 2008). One woman told me: “My husband watches satellite
channels and keeps saying to me. ‘These are the real women and this is real femininity, and it’s not
like you!’” Another woman told me: “My husband used to put me down while watching television
and tell me, ‘These women are better than you; go look at yourself in the mirror!’ Even when I made
an effort to dress up he used to make fun of me.” The painful reality that polygamy constitutes for
women formed a key part of my evidence.
Impact of Polygamy
Psychological
Despite the equanimity with which much of the male religious establishment in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories regards polygamy, the predominant reaction of the women themselves was
one of shock and betrayal at the way in which what they had believed had been a happy partnership
had been suddenly broken apart. One woman told me,
I felt I lost everything and my life is shattered. . . . I also felt betrayed because I trusted him, and had
no doubts that this would happen to me although I received a phone call from a woman telling me
about his marriage; but I refused to listen—I did not believe it.
Even Sheikh Ida’si told me that
polygamy is not easy for the woman; they will never accept it. It was not easy even for the wives of
prophet Mohammad, but this is not the decision of the woman, it is a clear verse in the Qu’ran—we
cannot change it.
The majority of women who experienced polygamy developed identifiable and patterned
psychological problems. Many of them exhibited symptoms of depression,26 such as feeling anxious,
sad, and tearful; insomnia; fatigue; and an inability to make decisions or to cope with their children
and family; as well as a general lack of interest in life were common (Al-Issa, 1990). Following the
husband’s remarriage, the majority of the women developed psychosomatic illnesses such as arm
aches, chest pain, back or abdominal pain, headaches, and fatigue. One woman told me that she
asked the dentist to extract all her teeth. The dentist explained to her that her teeth are healthy, but
she insisted, thinking that it would eliminate her headaches. All the women confessed to a loss of
the desire to live and began wishing for and fantasizing about death. So low was their despair and
lack of self-worth in five of the women that they had actually attempted suicide, and the other 11
claimed that they had contemplated this desperate end to their suffering. This is how one woman
explained her state of mind:
I could not sleep and left the house and started to walk on the bypass road27 until 5:00 a.m. I
wanted to be shot dead. I cooked for the children and then left to Bethlehem. I went to the mental
hospital there. I wanted to see a psychiatrist. I also wanted to see the patients. The guard told me I
was not allowed in because it was a weekend. I started walking in Bethlehem aimlessly and bumping
into cars and people. The following day I swallowed thirty tablets and was taken to hospital. I felt
insulted and wanted to die.
Another woman tried to commit suicide three times by taking an overdose of medicine and then
stopped trying as, according to her, the husband does not deserve risking her life. One woman
confessed, “When I knew about his remarriage I had a nervous break-down. I started to take
sedative tablets for a while, and then I stopped. It has been 22 years now and I still lose
consciousness under stress.”
Although the instances of polygamy may not be unusually high in the Occupied Palestinian
Territories, the overall social and political situation exacerbates reactions to it found elsewhere, into
what can only be described as an insupportable sense of entrapment and powerlessness. Post-Oslo
disillusionment has led to the elevation of a particularly intransigent, fundamentalist reading of
Islam into a species of ideological absolutism. The result has been that these women have lost all
faith in the legal system to redress what they perceive as the injustice of their plight. They simply do
not believe that reform of personal status law is anywhere on the horizon, and Sheikh Yousif Ida’si’s
reassurance that women can always find an escape from polygamy in divorce28 (see below) is not a
viable option for these women, since divorce in a traditional society is accompanied, they feel, by a
level of social shame equal to that attached to polygamy. Divorce, they thought, subjected them to
much stricter scrutiny by the community than did polygamy. Trapped emotionally, they are equally
disempowered financially, due in large part to the depressed state of the Palestinian economy. All
the women, even those few who could be classified as middle class, claimed that polygamy damaged
the financial viability of the husband’s first family, and in some cases the first wife was even asked to
help support the equally financially imperiled second family, so close to the margin of economic
hardship do many families live in Gaza and on the West Bank.
Economic
Most women in this study felt that polygamy led to financial difficulties severe enough to affect the
basic functioning of the family. Even the two women with an MA degree told me that although they
had stable jobs they could hardly cover the expenses of their children. They stayed in their marriages
to obviate the necessity of paying rent. Many women characterized their family economic situation
as between low and average in the first place, so that the addition of a co-wife and possible second
family could only imperil economic survival. The money these women could earn in the kinds of
domestic and cleaning jobs they would be able to find obviously precluded any bid for financial
independence. Interesting are the several claims of the women concerning the cavalier attitudes of
the men to the problem of financing a second marriage. In fact, most of the women did not think
that the husband’s economic situation played a role in the prospect of a second marriage; the
impression I gained was that polygamy per se was the desperate ambition of the men, an impulse
not unconnected surely to the damaged masculinity many Palestinian men have suffered under the
conditions of occupation. One woman told me:
I asked him where will you get the money for a new marriage, but he had no answer. I think he
borrowed money for the marriage. He is now struggling with life and asks me and my son for money.
Other wives reported that husbands stole their jewelry, raided the small family savings, and one
even used an insurance compensation of 4,000 Jordanian dinars received because of a car accident
in which his child had been killed.
Children
Particularly distressing for the women in this situation was the detrimental effect of polygamy on
their children, psychologically. Children manifested social withdrawal, antisocial behavior, low school
achievement, and even dropped out of school (Al-Krenawi & Graham, 2006; Al-Krenawi & Lightman,
2000; Cherian, 1990; Eapen, Al-Gazali, Bin-Othman, & AbouSaleh, 1998). One woman said to me,
“My son was a straight A student; he failed three subjects. He is hanging out most of the time.”
Children became confused and developed aggressive behavior. “My daughter set a fire in the
classroom. Until now, I feel she is not normal,” claimed another. The women’s own extreme
psychological state also, they felt, meant that they could not afford their children the calm support
they needed to negotiate the stress they were enduring. Above all, the children, especially the sons,
could not comprehend or accept how their fathers had behaved. They lost all respect for their
fathers (Al-Krenawi & Slonim-Nevo, 2008). When their fathers are away, they wish for their death
and try to support the mother. The image of their father is shattered. One woman recalls: “My son
woke up one night screaming, wondering why his dad did that. He said to me ‘My dad was like God
to me, I do not believe it’” (Al-Krenawi, Graham, & Slonim-Nevo, 2002). Children often have to
endure hearing insulting and inappropriate comments made by the father about their mother, such
as “Look at your mother’s nightdress it is so boring.” And they have even had to witness physical
attacks on their mother during arguments. One woman reported, “He hit me in front of my 3-yearold child, who started to cry and shouted ‘Do not hit her, I will hit you.’” Not only do the children
now have to cope with the often indifferent and competitive relationship with their half-siblings, but
they also endure insulting comments from the community about their father, such as “Your dad is a
womanizer” and “What your dad did is shameful,” intimidatory experiences which often increase
their withdrawal from social life.
Once again, in this situation the women feel powerless. When the children, feeling neglected by the
father and witnessing their parents’ fights, become aggressive toward him, it is the women who
experience a sense that they are responsible for their children and their correct upbringing. As one
woman told me:
I noticed that the children became rude when mentioning their father and I felt I had lost control
over them. I decided not to allow that and told them that they have to show respect. I wanted to be
in command of the family with the help of the father and guarantee the children’s proper behavior.
Other extreme cases of the women’s sense of failure toward their children are exemplified in the
reaction of one of my interviewees: “I am not stable. At one point I am calm and quiet, and then I
become crazy and my children try to avoid me. My older daughter takes care of the younger ones.”
The majority of the women told me, however, that their children were fully supportive to their
mothers and that they controlled their children’s behavior with their fathers.
Self-Awareness and Coping Strategies
All the reactions relayed to me by my interviewees manifested active rebellion against the status
quo in some way, as opposed to a passive wish to embrace death as an escape route from pain. The
most rudimentary expression was one of unfocussed anger, the rage of the powerless against a
situation over which they can exercise no legal right of redress. Regardless of age, education, or
profession, they confessed to breaking and smashing things, to name-calling and cursing their
husbands. One woman, devastated when her husband admitted his second marriage after 20 years
of a loving partnership, explained it thus:
I pulled my hair, hit myself and started to break the furniture. I cursed him and called him names and
took to the street and went to the parents’ house (of the co-wife), and started to throw stones, until
some friends interfered and took me back home.
Until now, she told me, she still becomes so angry that she breaks furniture in her house. Another
woman related how her husband
brought the suit that he wanted to wear the next day for his wedding and hung it up in my closet.
When he left, I took scissors and cut through the suit. He only discovered that on the wedding day.
He deserves that because when my son graduated and asked him for money to buy a suit he gave
him 100 shekels.29 He also did not care that one of his sons was sitting for the high school exams
when he decided to remarry.
Interestingly, given Sheikh Tamimi’s “reform” that makes it compulsory to inform the first wife of
the husband’s remarriage,30 it made no difference to the women’s grief and rage whether or not
they knew about the second marriage.
At either extreme of responses in the group there were, of course, both women whose suffering led
them to become cynical about Shari’a and those in whom it inspired an even profounder religious
devotion, although even among this latter group there was one woman whose prayers are being
superseded by a study of polygamy and its tafsir (interpretation according to religious scholars) and
another who claimed, “I try hard not to lose my belief but the problem is that even when I pray I
cannot focus; I am thinking of the disaster that happened to me.” In between these two poles were
the majority group who, while they still put their trust in Islam and Shari’a, engaged in an intellectual
enquiry into the practice of marriage that parallels with surprising accuracy, the approach of modern
Islamic scholars who advocate women’s rights. Rejecting their husbands’ literal reading of one
Qu’ranic verse on polygamy and their focus on the first part of the verse: “Marry women of your
choice, two, or three, or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then
only one” (Al-Qu’ran 4:3), an approach reinforced by the clergy, these women employed the same
strategy as the modernists, attempting to ascertain the overall intent of the Prophet’s teaching on
the subject of marriage and of the wider purpose of Islamic law—that of justice. Prepared to widen
the field of interpretation of Qu’ranic precepts, they proposed that male readings of the relevant
verses concerning equitable treatment of wives omitted any consideration of the question of
women’s feelings and claimed that emotional justice and equality between co-wives is not possible
(Sidqi, 1986; Wadud, 1999).
The majority of women interviewed for this research project assumed a wider and deeper
understanding of the Islamic view of marriage than that on which their husbands’ reliance on a
literal, incomplete reading of at most two verses from the Qu’ran is based. In parallel to modern
Islamist scholars (e.g., Abu Shaqqah, 1999; Banani, 1993; Barlas, 2002; Wadud, 1999), they asserted
that they had sought security and dignity in marriage, in accordance with the
Qu’ranic view of that state as a partnership, arguing that marriage in Islam is sacred and should
guarantee stability and serenity (istiqraar wa aman), a view that corresponds with the conception of
God as an arbiter between right and wrong. Some women quoted the following Qu’ranic verse to
prove their point:
And among His signs is this, that He created for you mates from among yourselves, that ye may
dwell in tranquility with them, and He has put love and mercy between your (hearts); verily in that
are signs for those who reflect. (Al Qu’ran 30:21)
Such an ability to contextualize discussions of their dilemma in an examination of the fundamental
precepts of Islam demonstrates the women’s capacity to engage in the practice of ijtihaad, or
“reasoning from faith” (Tucker, 2008), which allows for the adaptation of Islamic law to social
changes in space and time.
In particular, Islam has always paid special attention to the suffering of women and orphans,
advocated for their interests, and aimed to restore women’s dignity (Stowasser, 1994; Wadud,
1999), an approach that demonstrates how close to the Islamic precept was the idea of marriage,
which the women articulated to me. As a matter of fact, Islah Jad (2005) found that such discourse is
even taking place among women of the Palestinian Islamic movement (Hamas) where women “. . .
have to claim their rights and struggle for them in the light of the proper understanding of the
tolerant Shari’a” (p. 187).
The women interviewed were also aware of the specious practice referred to by Tabet (2005) when
she outlines how “customs often justify themselves by invoking the sacred text as a foundation
when they could alternatively be seen as mere interpretations by a patriarchal system trying to
remain in force” (p. 1). As one woman noted: “I do not think men will agree to restrict polygamy;
they benefit from it. The Sheikhs themselves support polygamy; some of them are polygamous
themselves.”
Some women developed coping strategies from within the confines of the polygamous marriage that
allowed them, they felt, at least to turn a bad situation to their maximum advantage. One woman
told me, “I did not ask for a divorce; as a married woman it is easier for me to move around. I am
more free, going to work and on social visits.” Similarly, although the majority of the women in this
study were unable to engage sincerely in an intimate relationship with their husbands after the
arrival of the new wife, some confessed to using the sexual relationship, pretending to enjoy it, in
order to gain maximum advantage for themselves and their children. As one woman told me,
I refused any sexual relation with him for one year after his remarriage. Now I pretend to enjoy our
intimate relationship so as to avoid problems, and to tie him to the family. I do not understand his
desire for me. He told me once I was bad at sex.
Another said, “I cannot stand him now and feel disgusted when he touches me, but accept the
sexual relations because I want him to go to the co-wife tired and drained.”
Such strategies do not, however, dissipate the fundamental impotence of their situation, expressed
in a yearning for revenge on the part of the majority of those interviewed. They wish their husbands
failure and even death. One woman put it this way: “I wish him distress all the time. I wish that he is
never well or comfortable. I wish him poverty and her (the co-wife) death.” Another woman told me:
My husband had been telling me that he will remarry and have the co-wife live on the second floor. I
have always wished the second floor would be destroyed. During the Israeli incursion in Hebron, the
Israeli soldiers destroyed the second floor and all the furniture there. I was happy.
The majority of the women thought that the death of their husbands would have been easier to
experience than the arrival of a co-wife. Most admitted that they wished their husbands would die,
and expressed delight on hearing of any difficulties or failures in their husbands’ lives.
Thirst for revenge might be fruitless, of course, in terms of seeking redress, however satisfying it may
be emotionally, and the majority of these women realize this. They understand that their mental
state is not a healthy one and that they need psychological intervention. But, doubting the
confidentiality of available public services, they will not use them, in case their husbands will seek to
justify polygamy through the “craziness” of the first wife. The majority of women prefer to talk to
friends instead. One woman told me, “I thought of calling the counseling center, but I couldn’t. I
prefer to talk to people that I trust.” What they are doing, instead, is using their intellect to analyze
and reassess the traditional pattern of female behavior, which they have always followed. Even
though some of these women were educated professionals, they conceded that they were
submissive or dependent on their husbands. They never attended to their own needs or selfdevelopment. Rather, they had spent their lives trying to meet social expectations. When they
experienced polygamy, they started to question their obedience and traditional role. On a second
marriage becoming a reality, they seemed to rebel against the assigned societal role that they would
be obedient to their husbands and accepting of a situation in which they were suffering. These
women have transitioned from passivity to an active attempt to carve out new paths for themselves.
One woman, for example, simply told her husband that she wanted to continue her studies:
He never allowed me to study; after his marriage I said to him that I was going to enroll in the MA
program. He felt I was determined and so I did. I wanted to study Shari’a law in depth; I wanted to
prove to him that he was wrong taking a second wife for no just reason.
Another woman told me:
I got my driver’s license now, I go wherever I want, I visit friends, take the kids out and go shopping, I
do not even ask for his permission, I used to ask even for visiting my mother. I am more free now to
go out, but there is not much choice, I am not allowed to Jerusalem or Israel. Choices are limited but
at least I do not have to ask for his permission.
One woman told me that she never paid attention to herself and her looks: “but now I do my hair
and wear make-up.
In an interesting case, another woman went to complain to the Women’s Affairs Technical
Committee (WATC).31 “They were very supportive and interested,” she claimed. “They interviewed
me on a local Palestinian station to talk about personal status law. I also started to write articles in
women’s newspapers; I have always had talent in writing, but never developed it.” Some of the
women, realizing that they had allowed themselves to become caught in a trap, not only blame
themselves for being so trusting and not taking care of their own interests but are also determined
to pass the lesson on to the next generation. “I am educating my daughters,” one woman told me,
“in not taking husbands for granted and to register property in their names when they get married. I
put this condition on the future husband of my daughter; she should not be naïve.”
Heba El-Kholy (2002), found similar coping strategies that are a mixture of “defiance and
compliance” among low-income women in Cairo. El-Kholy thinks that “women are both aware of
injustices, and willing to challenge them, but unable to pursue their aspirations due to external
constraints” (p. 218). Here is how she summarizes her results:
The women in my study display both defiance and compliance, both lack of articulated awareness of
their self-interest and positions of relative subordination and high levels of awareness of some of the
injustices against them as women. Some times their actions are pragmatic, seeking immediate relief.
At other times, they seek more medium-term or longer term gains. (pp. 217-218)
It must be said, however, that the majority of the women in my study, although they achieved a new
awareness that led to defiant actions, were unable to make a radical change in their lives. This is in
particular true as they have no control over the law or the situation. Women were also supported by
their community, however, which helped them to a certain extent regain their self-image.
Community Support
Assuming a negative approach toward polygamy, far from isolating these women in the community,
draws toward them the full sympathy of friends and relatives, who criticize men for practicing
polygamy. This attitude was widely divergent from that found among the religious establishment.
Many of the women received delegations of sympathetic relatives and neighbors as soon as their
husband’s second marriage was confirmed. One woman explained: “Women started to come in and
the house became full, as if someone had died.”32 My husband even asked me why the women
were here. I told him that they want to extend their condolences, it is your aza.”33 Not only did the
wider community oppose second marriages, but they also blamed the men and in some cases
boycotted them. None of the women in this study was accused of being the cause of her husband’s
remarriage. On the contrary, relatives and friends admired them even more; they blamed the
husbands and thought that they were ruthless. One woman reported how her husband had even
recounted the negative reaction to his taking a second wife:
He himself told me that men were critical of his remarriage. Many people in the village boycotted his
wedding. When he went to invite people for his wedding party, some women kicked him out of the
house and told him off.
Another woman said that her husband’s father had thrown him out of the house when he knew his
son’s intention to remarry.
Yamani (2008) found similar trends in Saudi Arabia only in certain groups. Yamani indicates that her
research was conducted in Western-influenced circles in Saudi Arabia and notes: “Sharp-tongued
comments towards polygamous men and women have turned polygamy into a shameful practice
amongst individuals mixing within these circles” (p. 73). Similar to Yamani’s results, statistics show
that Ramallah, the most cosmopolitan city in the West Bank, has the lowest rates of polygamy
(Welchman, 1999). In my study, however, I did not notice that class membership or geographical
region made a difference in the levels of sympathy that the women received.
Equally revealing of changing social attitudes is the fact that women themselves are less and less
willing to become second wives, an attitude borne out by the fact that there is no significant age
difference between wives and co-wives. It is not easy for men to find women willing to be second
wives, nor are families willing to send daughters into such a situation. The structure of Palestinian
society makes it difficult for people to be anonymous. One woman told me:
My husband tried hard to find a woman from the same village. People knew me very well. When he
went to ask for a woman’s hand, some families told him off and told him there is no reason for you
to remarry. Some families came and told me about his visit. He found a woman from a far-away
village and who lives in poverty, and marriage was a solution for her.
Recent polls conducted by Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre (2008) support this
anecdotal evidence, showing, as they do, that although the majority of Palestinians agree that
legislation should be based on Shari’a, most Palestinians (68.4%) opposed polygamy and that
although 55% of women thought that personal status law should reflect Shari’a values, 66% of the
same group did not believe that the law, as it stood at the time, guaranteed the equality for women
that they desired. (For more details on opinion and attitudes see the interesting analysis by Rema
Hammami, 2004, on contradictory values and the secular nationalist voice that coexists strongly with
loyalty to Shari’a.)
Conclusion
Palestinian reform of personal status issues is a multiple and combined, often divided, effort of the
Palestinian Authority, the religious institutions, women’s movements, and NGOs, following the Oslo
agreements. However, such efforts faced various challenges that have hindered the reform in favor
of women until now. The patriarchal structure of Palestinian society has impeded reform to grant
women equal rights. So too have the Israeli measures against Palestinians, since they have
negatively affected Palestinian socioeconomic life and by dividing the land and its integrity, have
weakened the Palestinian Authority and its ability to restore and enforce law. Moreover, the
Islamization of social and political discourse in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, together with
the Palestinian internal fighting between Fatah and Hamas, was an additional factor to frustrate
reform efforts.
Through the voices of women who experience polygamy, this article has attempted to demonstrate
the detrimental affect it has on both the women involved and on the family. It has also shown how
these women have little faith in the authorities, civil and religious, to reform personal status law,
because despite the fact that Islam itself grants justice, the male discourse that prevails in these
institutions does not encourage free practice of ijtihad and the interpretation of Shari’a, a situation
prejudicial to reform which is reinforced by media influences.
The sample in this study is small and some anthropological variables will need further research. Such
variables will shed further light on the role of socioeconomic, educational, and topographical
backgrounds in the practice of polygamy and its impact on women and their coping strategies.
Research is also required to investigate the reason why some women are willing to be second wives.
This is probably due to the fact that, in my analysis of the male-dominated society and its discourse,
women are left dependent on men economically and/or psychologically.
Despite the fact that my research showed women’s personal transition from despair to increasing
psychological and intellectual independence and their willingness to reappraise the female role in
traditional marriage, they remain fundamentally helpless to actually remedy what they see as the
injustice of their situation. Their impotence to affect such redress will persist until they gain legal
equality with men under a radical redrafting of personal status law, since it is only through the
reform of institutions that empowerment can be achieved.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Notes
1.
Deputy Chief Ida’si was referring to records in the Sharia court.
2.
Unless otherwise stated, all quotes are taken from my personal interview with Sheikh Yousif
Ida’si, in his capacity as the Deputy Chief of Islamic Justice, Shu’fat, January 3, 2010. Sheikh Ida’si
was appointed by President Mahmoud Abbas as Chief of Islamic Justice in January 2012 to replace
Sheikh Taysir Tammimi.
3.
This has changed in April 2011, as the Chief of Islamic Justice issued a procedural instruction
to Sharia courts that husbands who are married and intend to remarry should inform wife/wives and
publish this in a newspaper. This was part of the reform program in the Model Parliament in 2005.
4.
Many scholars advocate the reform of personal status laws based on reading the Qu’ran and
using ijtihaad (reasoning from faith to interpret religious law) to ascertain and guarantee equal rights
for women. See Badawi (1995), Banani (1993), Barlas (2002), Goolam (2006) and Wadud (1999).
5.
I structured the interviews and questionnaires based on my familiarity with the Palestinian
personal status laws and their impact on women. In 2009, I conducted a pilot study on a sample of
three women and used the data gathered from that sample to update and refine the questionnaire
for the current study.
6.
The sole exception was a Christian Palestinian woman who fell in love with a Muslim man
and married him.
7.
In response to the second (or Al-Aqsa) Intifada in the autumn of 2000, Israel imposed
military checkpoints between cities and villages, resulting in the ghettoization of entire communities.
The Palestinian Authority is weak and unable to maintain law and order in spirit or practice. The
Hamas coup against the Palestinian Authority in 2007 divided the Palestinian Authority even further.
See Amnesty International Report (2009).
8.
UN News Service; UN reports highlight Israeli infringement of Palestinians’ rights, November
7, 2008. Retrieved from http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/ docid/49184481c.html
9.
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC); ICRC Annual Report 2007— Israel, The
Occupied and Autonomous Palestinian Territories; May 27, 2008.
Retrieved from http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/484e7a670.html
10.
Freedom House, Women’s Rights in the Middle East and North Africa 2010— Palestine
(Palestinian Authority and Israeli Occupied Territories); March 3, 2010. Retrieved from
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4b99011fb.html
11.
This refers to the tendency of Muslim Palestinians in the Occupied Territories to turn toward
what they thought were the fundamentals of Islamic law and practice, producing what Blaydes and
Linzer (2008) refer to as “a confluence of politics and religion consistent with conservative Islamic
values” (p. 1). Between 1967 and 1987, a “religious resurgence with a politicized cast” (Johnson,
2004, p. 145) occurred in the West Bank and Gaza. Because of the Gulf State investment, the
number of mosques rose from 200 to 600 in Gaza and from 400 to 750 in the West Bank. Moreover,
Islamist groups entered the university campuses promoting Islamic dress among young women.
Thus, the assumption of power by an Islamist group such as Hamas was not a revolutionary
development in Palestinian life. (For fuller details, see Welchman, 2004, pp. 97-175.)
12.
The Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) has not been able to hold a legal quorum since 2007
due to the coup against the Palestinian National Authority. Many Hamas members of the PLC are
incarcerated in Israeli prisons, thus preventing the formation of a legal quorum.
13.
Although women’s organizations and civil society activists are working hard to change the
laws in order to grant equal family law rights to women, they find that not only the Islamist
movements, but even the Palestinian Authority itself, is obstructing their reform efforts (Amnesty
International, 2009; Human Rights Watch, 2006-Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territories [OPT]). Both
the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are using Islamic discourses and notions of “traditional”
morality and gender roles to demonstrate their commitment to the values of an idealized, authentic
Palestinian society (see Ladsin, 2011).
14.
Unless otherwise stated, all quotes come from my personal interview with Salam Fayyad,
Palestinian Prime Minister, Ramallah, December 28, 2009.
15.
Unless otherwise stated, all quotes are taken from my personal interview with Halimeh Abu
Soulb, Community Mobilization Officer, Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling, Ramallah,
November 29, 2009.
16.
There is a significant role for women’s movements and civil society organizations in
confronting the difficult challenges facing women represented, in particular, by the personal status
laws. However, the emerging debate within the women’s movement centers on whether or not to
accept a minimal amendment to the personal status law or to insist on a complete reform that
grants full equal rights to women.
17.
The women’s movement itself was divided between the secular and the Islamic positions on
women’s rights and the reform of personal status law, and its conclusions revised due to what would
appear to have been the reluctance of the clerical establishment to accept the original draft of the
final communiqué, which passed back and forth between the clerics and the women several times
(personal interview with Halimeh Abu Soulb).
18.
“Heading Towards Achieving Hope: Annual Report,” Women’s Centre for Legal Aids and
Counselling. April 20, 2010. Retrieved from http://www.wclac.org/
userfiles/WCLAC%202009%20Annual%20Report.pdf
19.
For further analysis on masculinity in the discourse of the Palestinian Nationalism leadership
that delineated gender roles, see Massad (1995).
20.
Heading Towards Achieving Hope (2008). April 20, 2010. Retrieved from http://
www.wclac.org/userfiles/WCLAC%202009%20Annual%20Report.pdf
21.
All quotes, unless otherwise stated, are drawn from personal interviews conducted in 20092010 in the West Bank with 16 women involved in polygamous relationships. Although the majority
of the women told me that they did not care about confidentiality for themselves or their husbands,
they asked me to preserve their anonymity for the sake of their children. I assured the women that
their anonymity would be protected, and to do so, I refrain from using their names.
22.
He said this in strong, vulgar language.
23.
Unless otherwise stated, all quotes come from my personal interview with Hiyam Kakour,
Head of Services Unit, at the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling, Ramallah, December 8,
2009.
24.
The Hajj Metwali Family is an Egyptian soap opera that played during the month of Ramadan
in 2001 on many Arabic satellite channels.
25.
http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/general/the-family-of-hajj-metwalli-makes -waves-inarab-world-1.432925
26.
According to DSM-IV diagnostic criteria (American Psychiatric Association, 2000).
27.
Bypass roads connect Israeli settlements in the West Bank to Israel. These roads are offlimits and dangerous for Palestinians.
28.
Interview, January 3, 2010.
29.
Approximately US$28.
30.
Article 23 of the draft personal status law of 2005 stipulated: The judge who signs the
marriage contract of the man who desires to marry another [i.e., additional] woman must ensure
that the first wife or the former wives have been notified that the marriage is about to happen, and
the new wife also has to know about any former wives, and the Chief Judge shall issue the necessary
instructions on means of notification of the wives.
31.
WATC was established in 1992 in Jerusalem. It was a technical team meant to support the
peace process that advocated inclusion of gender matters in the political context. WATC continued it
work after the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority. For more information, see
http://www.watcpal.org/english/ display.asp?DocID=7.
32.
In Palestinian tradition, people visit the family of a deceased person to give condolences.
33.
When an individual dies, his/her direct relatives receive people who have come to give
condolences in their house. This house is called Aza, or comfort house.
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