Practice of polygamy continues to grow in Israel

One quarter Bedouin families have multiple mothers


Polygamy is not a diminishing phenomenon worldwide and, despite being illegal in Israel, is practiced here by hundreds of families, specifically in the Bedouin sector, according to a wide range of experts who presented their research at a first-of-its-kind conference on the controversial subject held Wednesday at Ben Gurion University of the Negev.

In the conference’s opening speech, Talal Al-Krenawi, mayor of the country’s largest Bedouin town, Rahat, said that the Bedouin sector was faced with numerous challenges in the face of modernity, particularly in the area of family planning and stemming the practice of polygamy, which involves a man taking multiple wives and fathering numerous children from them.

“There is cultural pressure in our community to have lots of children but we must strive to raise awareness to improve family planning,” stated Al-Krenawi. “Large families conceived without planning ends up leading to poverty and other socio-economic problems.”

He pointed out that while Islam permits a man to have up to four wives, it is only under the condition that he can treat them all equally in both a financial and an emotional sense.

“Who is able to treat three wives equally?” joked Al-Krenawi. “[Polygamy] is allowed but even the Prophet Mohammad did not recommend it.”

According to data presented at the conference, roughly 20-25 percent of Israel’s Bedouin families practice polygamy, with the majority of the women and children in such families suffering from deep psychological, economic and social difficulties.
Conference chairman, social work professor Alean Al-Krenawi -- brother of Mayor Al-Krenawi – presented the findings of a three-year study comparing polygamous and monogamous Bedouin families in Israel.

In the process of his research, Al-Krenawi took a sample of some 973 subjects, with half derived from polygamous families and the other half from monogamous. He questioned fathers, wives and children about their psychological, family, and social functioning, as well as their marital quality, father-child relationships, mother-child relationships and even checked the children’s levels of scholastic success.

He found that children from polygamous families reported more distress, depression, anxiety and problems in establishing social relationships than those from monogamous households. Children from polygamous families also have much lower self-esteem and tend to quarrel with their fathers more, the research found.

“There is always going to be tension between the women, which ends up creating different camps in the family,” explained Al-Krenawi. “The father tends to prefer the junior wife and abandons the senior wife and her children.”

Al-Krenawi’s research also found, surprisingly, that men in polygamous families were not generally happy with their situation, mostly due to the constant arguing between wives and children. Many of the men said that, in retrospect, they would not have chosen to marry multiple wives.

Sheik Hammad Abu-Daabis, Head of the Southern Islamic Movement, spoke out for polygamy, explaining that it was his religion’s way of providing a solution to the limitation of Islam’s marriage laws.

“Polygamy solves problems,” stated Abu-Daabis. “Anxiety and depression are only side effects of the practice but we must also look at the benefits.”
He went on to list several key reasons for a man taking additional wives such as if the first woman falls sick or is infertile, as a way of a man being honest about any sexual betrayals or as an opportunity for the second wife to find love and marriage too.

While the first wife does not have a choice on whether her husband should have a second wife, the new woman is making a conscious decision to marry an already married man, he said, adding that being a single woman of advanced years in Muslim culture is particularly problematic.

Additional speakers at the conference included Minister of Welfare and Social Services Isaac Herzog, who said that Israeli law had to find provisions for polygamous families so that the children of such families do not end up becoming neglected or at risk and to enable additional wives, who are not recognized by the law, to receive state benefits; and American-Lebanese Professor Sherifa Zuhur from the US Army War College.

Zuhur spoke out against polygamy in any culture, country or society, condemning the practice as an obstacle to the basic human rights of women.
“Social scientists wrongly assume that polygamy is fading away or that only wealthy men engage in the practice,” Zuhur told the conference. “These are all myths and are untrue. Today, there are new forms of polygamy that all benefit the men and all hurt women.”

Most of those attending the conference came from the Bedouin sector or from other communities, such as the Hebrew Israelites in Dimona, who practice or have practiced polygamy in the past.