The moral effect of divorce on the children is very bad. They often seem to have an inborn passion of hatred and jealousy. The head mistress of a school for girls said she had often noticed how little gentle affection and love seemed to exist between Mohammedan sisters. These passions are also trained into them, for they constantly hear their parents spoken against and see the jealousy that exists between their mothers and the wives who have supplanted them.
The children of divorced parents, being neglected and not having any settled home, generally grow up in ignorance, because they do not stay long enough in one place to go to school regularly. A school was established in a Mohammedan quarter of a large city with a view to reaching the people in that district, but they were of a class whose social system was in such a constant state of upheaval by divorcing and marrying new wives that it was quite impossible to keep the children in school long enough at a time to make any impression upon them. When asked why a certain Zeinab had not put in her appearance, "Oh, she has gone to see her mother who lives across the canal."—"Where is Tantaweyah to-day?"—"Gone to stay with her father awhile in another village."—"What can be the matter with Kaleela?" the teacher asks. She knew Kaleela loved school and would not stay away without an excuse, and she knew that her father wanted her to stay in school, but she had a suspicion that the new wife at home had been the means of putting a stop to Kaleela's schooldays. Her suspicion was true, for the new wife's new baby required a nurse.
The institution of polygamy like that of divorce is a natural consequence of the strict seclusion of woman, for it would be unfair to a man to be put under the necessity of taking a wife he had never seen without allowing him some license should he be disappointed in her. In fact, polygamy was the original institution, a relic of the ancient and more barbarous times, Jewish as well as Heathen. By making polygamy a religious institution, the Prophet preserved a relic of barbarism.
Yet even among Mohammedans polygamy is a dying institution. Its death-blow has been struck because educated Moslems are beginning to be ashamed of it and doctors of Mohammedan law are beginning to interpret the law to mean that Mohammed allowed a man to have four wives on the condition that he could treat all alike; and since human nature makes that condition next to an impossibility therefore Mohammed meant for a man to have only one wife! Many educated Mohammedans in Egypt are taking this position. Among the middle classes the difficulty of supporting more than one wife at a time is decreasing polygamy. But by no means is polygamy an unheard-of thing, even if it is going out of fashion. Fashion is always slow in reaching the country places, and it seems to be in the country villages that polygamy seems to be more generally practised. Two brothers, representative country-men, wealthy and conservative, were known to have very extensive harems, each one having twenty-four wives and concubines.
Many fruitless attempts have been made to defend polygamy and to defend the prophet of Islam for preserving it, but, as a careful student of social and moral ethics has said, "To an ideal love, polygamy is abhorrent and impossible," and when ideal love is impossible to the wife's heart she is degraded because the passions of hate and jealousy will quickly and surely take its place.
The Arabic word which is applied to a rival wife is "durrah," the root meaning of which is "to injure," "to harm." This appellation certainly shows that the fellow-wives are not expected to be on terms of amity with each other.
The most common excuse for taking a second wife "over the head" of the first wife, as expressed in Arabic, is that she has failed to present her husband with a son. To die without a son would be a great disgrace, so he takes his second wife. A well-educated, pleasant-spoken Moslem sheikh, who was teaching some new missionaries the Arabic language, was just on the point of marrying. Being much interested in the young man, one of the missionaries took occasion to impress upon him some of his moral duties toward his new wife. Among them that he should never take another during her lifetime. "Yes, honorable lady, I promise to do as you say if God is willing and she presents me with a son, otherwise against my will I must take a second."
A missionary lady and a Bible woman were making some house-to-house visits in a little country village. As they were going through the street two smiling-faced women standing together in the door of their hut pressed them to enter and pay them a visit, too. In the course of the conversation it turned out that they were fellow-wives. "Have you any children?" was asked of the older. "No, neither has she," was the quick response indicating her rival with a nod of her head. Their common disappointment in not having any children seemed to draw them together and they seemed more like sisters than rival wives, but if one had a child and the other not there would have been some quarrelling and trouble.
As can be quite easily understood it is rarely possible for fellow-wives to live together in the same house. In one village there were two houses quite near each other. One was known as the "house of Hassan"; the other as the "little house of Hassan." The former is the family house, and the other is hired by one of the sons for his second wife, the first wife being in the larger dwelling. The quarrels are so incessant that it is difficult for any one to be friendly with both parties, and the second wife is ruining her health with inordinate smoking "to kill thought." She seems very lonely and dull, but says the arrangement is good, for when her husband is vexed with her he goes to the other house, and when vexed in the other house he comes to her, and she added, "If we lived together and he were vexed with both at once, he would have to sleep in a hotel!"
A Bible woman was wont to visit two young women who lived in a large apartment house, on different floors one just above the other. At first they were believed to be the wives of brothers, but they were so much at variance with each other that neither would enter the apartment of the other, so had to be taught and read to separately, much to the inconvenience of the teacher, who could not understand why two sisters-in-law, as she thought, could not meet together to read. She soon discovered that they were both wives of one man and that jealousy was the cause of the disagreement.