Polygyny

Polygyny is titled precisely to reflect the form of plural marriage practiced byMuslims: one husband with up to four wives, as described in Q. 4:3. DebraMajeed employs the term living polygyny to describe the experiences of thoseinvolved in such marriages: men with multiple wives, the first or subsequentwives, those married both civilly and religiously, those only religiously marriedin a nikāḥ (Islamic marriage contract) ceremony, publically recognizedmarriages, closeted polygynous marriages not publically recognized, and“back door” marriages in which at least one wife is unknown to the other(s).The participants discussed in this book presently live in or have been part ofa polygynous marriage.Polygyny is a qualitative ethnography that utilizes womanist theoreticalapproaches through dialogical performance, an approach in which interviewdata are dialogues performed through “imaginary interplay” (p. 31) acrossparticipant responses. It also constructs a rich and comprehensive presentationof her findings in the form of the participants’ voices as well as triangulatesdata by using focus groups, surveys, and interviews. However, the methodsrequire greater detail to specify how the surveys were used. Majeed’s paradigmis rooted in gender justice, which acknowledges the intersectionality ofall social statuses held by women in these cases: religion, race, gender, maritalstatus, motherhood, age, class, and ability. She asserts that Muslim womanismis not only a lens for seeing the world, but also a “way of knowing ...