POLYGYNY IN ISLAMIC LAWAND PUKHTUN PRACTICECharles LindholmBoston UniversityThe Pukhtun of Swat in Northern Pakistan refer to Islam to justify their practice ofpolygamy and female subordination. However, Islamic law is far more egalitarian thanPukhtun practice. Using case studies and statistical evidence, this article argues thathusbands in Swat take second wives mainly in a spirit of revenge, reflecting the endemichostility between spouses that exists within this strongly patriarchal segmentary lineageorganization in which romantic love is ideally reserved for chaste extramaritalrelationships. An ideology of the primacy of paternal blood underlies the misogynisticattitudes characteristic of Swat, and prevalent elsewhere in the Middle East and theCircum-IVIediterranean region. (Polygyny, Islamic law, patriarchy, misogyny)In 1969, when I first visited the Pukhtun people of Swat, in the Northwest Frontierof Pakistan,' some men had more than one wife. Polygyny was explained as permitted, and even favored,in Islam. But it soon became apparent that there was muchmore to polygyny than a religious injunction. A local proverb which goes, "I maybe a fool, but not such a fool as a man who has two wives," indicates that marryingmore than one woman is the self-destructive act ofa fool. Yet a substantial portionof Swati men, especially the wealthier and more powerful, were nonetheless polygynous. This essayexplores the disjuncture between Islamic law and Pukhtun practice,and considers why Pukhtun men want to be polygynous even when they realize thepractice is not only foolish, but can also be dangerous. It concludes with some speculations about thepossible sources of Swati polygyny.Swat is a beautiful valley surrounded by the jagged snowy peaks of the HinduKush Range. The rushing cold waters of the Swat River bisect the valley, and roundgrey river stones are used to build the tightly packedvillagesand the houses whereextended families share cramped space. In the late 1970s the population density herewas high, and it is higher today. Despite the fertility of the soil, famine is always athreat, so that struggles for land and power are literally a matter of life and death. Nopolice force or government authority controls these struggles. Rather, the area isorganized politically and spatially on the basis ofa segmentary lineage system thatdivides land among patrilateral relatives,and so pits them against one another. Theterm of reference for the father's brother's son (a man's closest neighbor, nearestrelative, and major rival) is tarbur, which also translates as enemy. The term ofaddress is the much friendlier vror (brother). Political relationships of alliance andantagonism in this tightly packed system are fiexible and adaptive, based upon acombination of two basic and well-known principles: "I against my brothers, my181ETHNOLOGY vol. 47, no. 3, Summer 2008, pp. 181-193.ETHNOLOGY, c/o Department of Anthropology, The University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA 15260 USACopyright 2009 by The University of Pittsburgh. All rights reserved.182 ETHNOLOGYbrothers and I against our cousins, my cousins, my brothers, and I against the world"and "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."In this contentious setting, marriage would seem to be primarily a political act,an effort to secure alliances in a world of potential enemies. Therefore, a simple wayto account for polygyny would be that men maximize their power by maximizingtheir marriage relationships. But this does not fit with the reality of polygynousmarriage, which, as I will demonstrate, usually creates enmity, not solidarity,between in-laws. Nor does this explanation account for the ambivalence the Pukhtunfeel about polygyny. To better understand the nature of polygyny in Swat, it mustfirst be contextualized in the Quran and Islamic traditions (hadith), since these arethe texts to which the Pukhtun refer when explaining their marital practices andattitudes.MARRIAGE RELATIONSHIPS IN ISLAMIt is true that the Prophet Muhammad, who was an enthusiastic polygynist,practiced plural marriage for political reasons. Heeventually contracted 12 officialmarriages, using his marital alliances to cement his relationships with rival groupsand with his own followers (the first five caliphs were his in-laws). In so doing,Muhammad exceeded his own revelation, as expressed in the Quran, that a man maymarry four wives. However, although many of the Prophet's marriages were purelypolitical, it is often forgotten that he was steadfastly monogamous for 25 years,remaining faithful to his much older first wife, Khadija, who used her money andposition to support her husband's prophetic mission. Muhammad's ambivalencetoward polygyny is indicated as well in his stipulation that the marriage between hisfavorite daughter Fatima and his cousin Ali (the fourth Caliph) had to be strictlymonogamous. The Pukhtun too do not want their daughters to enter into polygynousunions, even though they may be keen to take plural wives themselves^.Despite the complexity of Muhammad's example, many commentators have seenthe Islamic legal permission for plural marriage as misogynist (e.g., Memissi 1991,1975). Memissi (1975:14) writes: "The whole Muslim social structure can be seenas an attack on, and a defense against the disruptive power of female sexuality." Yet,a closer look reveals that the family law and marriage practices ordained in theQuran and enforced by Islamicjurisprudence very often directly challenge traditionalmale prerogatives and affirm the humanity and equality of women, who had previously been oppressedin pre-Islamic patriarchies (Kandiyoti 1991, 1992; Tillion1966). Islam proclaims that both men and women have eternal souls and are destinedto fill their God-given complementary roles in the universe: men in the publicsphere, women in the private. The Quran also explicitly repudiates the previouslynormative practice of female infanticide and profoundly alters the pre-Islamic legalstatus of women who had been regarded as chattel owned by men, to be inheritedand disposed of at will. Under Islam, women are legal shareholders in the decedent'sISLAMIC LAW AND PUKHTUN PRACTICE 183estate, with rights of inheritance that cannot be abrogated by their own kin or theirhusbands' family.Many other aspects of Islamic lawthat may seem misogynistic when viewed inisolation are less so when understood in context. For example, the legal rule that awoman is entitled to only half of the amount inherited by