Is a 'Little Bit of Sharia' Okay?

Islam does not require second wives, so Muslims in the West must "follow the laws," Badawi wrote in a May 2005 Islam Online fatwa. Yet he claims that Western prohibition of second wives for Muslims denies "a particular right according to [our] own sharia." Western democracies should "reciprocate" what Badawi considers Islamic tolerance of religious minority worship, teachings, family law, and estate division with equal "autonomy in [Islamic] issues ... , including marriage." They should except their own laws to legalize Muslim sharia, making Islamic polygamy "quiet [sic] legitimate," and superior to Western secular laws allowing homosexual marriage. Often, he claims, no "solution would be better than polygamy" -- for men with barren wives "instinctively aspir[ing] to have children or heirs," for example, or whose "chronically ill" wives they must divorce or forever "suppress ... instinctive sexual needs" and secretly take "one or more illicit sex partners." Forget women's wants or needs. Polygamy is an "optional solution," Badawi claims.