Religious Problem in India

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophist Office Adyar

Page 35

ISLĀM
27
share of the inheritance from their parents, from their brothers, from their husbands. But aye, they say, Polygamy! there is the blot as regards woman; true; but who are ther who judge ? and do they remember that the law was given to a people plunged in licentiousness of the grossest kind, who were linnited by it to four wives ? I read in the Old Testament of polygamy in the Friend of God, and the man after God's own heart ; nay, the New Testament does not forbid it save for the Bishop or Deacon, of whom alone it is said that they must be the husband of one wife. So also I read in the old Hindū books of polygamy. It is so easy to try to pick holes in another man's faith, but what Westerner shall dare to speak against the limited polygamy of the East so long as there is prostitution in the West? There is no · monogamy as yet in the world save here and there, among the purer-living men. It is not monogamywhere there is one legal wife, and mistresses out of sight. In thins speaking, I do not speak to attack, but to strive that men may give justice to each other. One mau and one woman, that is the tine marriage ; all else is evil. But most men are not yet pure enough for that, and in the scales of justice the polygamy of the East which guards, shelters, feeds and clothes the wires, may weigh heavier than the prostitntion of the West, which takes a woman for Inst, and throws her on the streets when lust is satiated. Judge both as evil, but do not let the Christian blame his brother for the sin that both commit. Polygamy is evil, my Musulman brothers ; and remember that your owuProphet told