Controlling four wives doesn’t prove one’s eligibility for president!

Haveeru daily has reported Adhalath Party’s Shaheem saying “one who can control four wives can control the nation”. He was referring to Qasim Ibrahim. I was taken aback by this statement. I thought how can somebody in his right mind, equate running a nation with just controlling four wives. One can infer many conclusions from this statement made by Shaheem.

First of all, I wonder why he has used the term control. It gives a feeling that he thinks women are inferior or evil who need to be kept under men’s command or control at all times. He even went on saying something like, we are struggling to live with even one wife, which further proves my point. Marrying and living with a woman doesn’t mean men are controlling them. They are just living with them, it’s a mutual relationship. In fact, this is the spirit of the Islamic teachings as far as I know.

By making man as the leader in a marriage, Islam is not implying any superiority or advantage for men over women. It’s just reflecting the natural difference between the sexes which entitles the weaker sex to protection. This leadership role of men doesn’t mean the husband’s dictatorship over his wife. On the contrary Islam emphasizes the importance of taking counsel and mutual agreement in family decisions (Badawi 1980). As this is not in the scope of this discussion, I don’t have any intention to further discuss this issue.

The other important point about Shaheem’s statement is that, he has equated ruling a nation with controlling four wives. Literally speaking, a nation is much more than just four women. There are thousands of men, women and children in our country. So it takes a lot more to control these 300,000 people. In my opinion, the kind of skill and expertise which require to run a country is very different from such that require to “control” or live with four wives. We are not talking about keeping a single household happy, but instead we are talking about keeping the whole population of a country happy. So I really doubt that “controlling” four wives makes someone eligible to run our beloved nation.

I wonder whether Shaheem knows anything about Qasim’s family life. We don’t know anything about Qasim’s family life, apart from knowing that he has 4 wives. Knowing that someone has 4 wives doesn’t make us believe that he is controlling them or living a peaceful happy life with them.

Furthermore we are a nation advancing towards freedom, human rights, equality etc. So we don’t need a president to control us. What we need is someone to guide and inspire us. We are not just an ignorant or evil bunch of people living in a country, so we don’t need to be controlled like “Qasim Ibrahim’s 4 wives”.