Good Muslim Cleric Dies After Being Castrated by One of His 'anti-islamic culture' Wives for Planning to Marry Again

[duluxe]

https://pjmedia.com/culture/robert-...is-wives-for-planning-to-marry-again-n1458199

The facts at hand presumably speak for themselves, but a trifle more vulgarly, I suspect, than facts even usually do. On Thursday evening in the Indian city of Muzaffarnagar, Hazra, the second wife of the Muslim cleric Maulvi Vakil Ahmad, pleaded with him not to take a third wife. The good Maulvi refused her pleas and went to sleep, whereupon, according to India Today, “Hazra cut off his manhood with a sharp-edged kitchen knife, due to which he ‘bled to death.’”


What a shame. Hazra will no doubt now face the full measure of the law, yet while her action cannot be excused, it can be understood. Polygamy destroys romance, and dehumanizes women, reducing them to the status of commodities. Is she the one, the only one, who has captured your heart, delighted your eyes, put a spring in your step and filled your heart with joy? No, she is just one in a series, and can be changed once you grow tired of her. The Qur’an tells Muslim men to “marry those that please you of women, two or three or four. But if you fear that you will not be just, then one.…” (Qur’an 4:3).

It seems fair: A man who cannot be just with multiple wives should restrict himself to just one, but in such matters, what constitutes just behavior is all too subjective and elusive. Islamic authorities have generally understood this to mean equal economic support and equal time in the beds of each.

Yet even if all this were scrupulously managed, an equal distribution of affection wouldn’t be possible. Islamic tradition records that even Muhammad favored his child bride Aisha over all of his other wives. A hadith has a Muslim making bold to ask him, “Who is the most beloved person to you?” Muhammad answered with one word: Aisha. (Bukhari 5.62.3662) What might his other wives have thought of this?

In contrast to this, the human heart longs to love and be loved uniquely, and this desire cannot be extinguished. In Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire, 1453–1924, Philip Mansel’s elegantly written history of Constantinople after the Muslim conquest, he offers a moving case in point involving the daughter of the sultan of the Ottoman Empire:

Yet even these most powerful and privileged of Ottoman society might be tortured by jealousy. Adile Sultan, daughter of the great nineteenth-century reformer Mahmud II, married an army officer, Mehmed Ali Pasha. They were in love. One day at the fashionable meeting-place in the Golden Horn called the Sweet Waters of Europe, she attracted his attention. Since she was thickly veiled, he did not know who she was. He dropped a scented handkerchief at her feet. That night the Pasha found the handkerchief on the pillow beside his sleeping wife.

One day, Adile Sultan traveled to a mosque far from her home. Taking advantage of the celebrated Oriental hospitality, she stopped for a rest at a mansion that was on the way. While enjoying coffee and sherbet set out by her hostess, she was astonished to find that her hostess, too, was the wife of Mehmed Ali Pasha.