Sonntag, 14.01.2018 / 23:11 Uhr

Debatte über Polygamie in Ägypten

Von
Thomas von der Osten-Sacken

Mit der großen Ausnahme von Tunesien ist Polygamie in allen arabischen Ländern legal. So auch in Ägypten, dessen 2011 gestürzter Präsident im Westen gerne als säkular tituliert wurde, auch wenn zumindest im ägyptischen Zivilrecht die Scharia eine bedeutende Rolle spielt.

Seit einiger Zeit nun findet im Land eine heftige Debatte über die Vielehe statt, ja es gibt sogar Stimmen, die sich gerade jetzt für sie stark machen:

According to a study by the National Center for Sociological and Criminological Research, 70% of second marriages end in divorce and 25% of Egyptian husbands remarry within the first three years of their first marriage. The statistics, dating back several years, are questionable given that the bulk of the second marriages are urfi marriages that are neither registered nor recognized by the government. Such informal marriages simply require the couple to sign a handwritten document (with or without witnesses) and are a way of getting around religious constraints on extramarital or premarital sex.

While accurate figures are hard to find, one thing is certain: The country is undergoing a marriage crisis, described by some as a ticking social time bomb. Not only are divorce rates alarmingly high (reaching more than 60% in cities in 2017, according to the national statistics agency) but the number of unmarried women is also soaring. In October, the figure hit 11 million — an estimated 50% of women of marriageable age.

The current circumstances have emboldened polygamy proponents, whose voices have grown louder in recent months. They justify the controversial practice on grounds that it gives women a “better chance of avoiding spinsterhood” and makes it easier for them to “exercise their right to have a husband.” They also argue that having more than one wife allows men a “sensible way to assuage male sexual frustration, a common cause of divorce.”

Pro-polygamy campaigner Rania Hashem, who has written the book "Polygamy: A Religious Right," says, “Women have no right to object to their husbands’ taking multiple wives as they cannot forbid what God has sanctioned in the Quran.”

Hashem appears frequently on television and organizes seminars that advocate polygamy. “By acquiescing in your husband’s decision to take other wives, you are in fact abiding by the rules of Islam,” she tells women. Basing her argument on what she calls “the sex-ratio imbalance,” she says there are millions of women who are unmarried because of the shortage in men in Egypt. “Polygamy is key to resolving this and other social problems.”

However, many say that no such imbalance exists, and that the high rates of unmarried women cannot be blamed on the lack of men.