Music Regarding the arguments some have raised or questions concerning why it is prohibited for a woman to marry more than one husband, Firstly, it is a clear statement in the Quran in chapter 4 verse 22 to 24, where Allah mentions the various categories of people that are prohibited in marriage and one of them is marriage to women who are already married. In other words, it is not allowed to be a second husband, it is not allowed to marry a woman who is already married to somebody else. When we look at the possible reasons for this, I think what one concludes is that from a holistic impact assessment, whatever benefits one may think may be derived from such marital arrangements, such polyandrous marital arrangements, the harm to individual, to family, to society would always be greater than the harm. When one looks at it more carefully, if a woman was married to three, four or five or two husbands and each husband wanted a minimum number of children, it would be a lot of pressure on one woman to meet the needs of multiple husbands. This would usually force husbands to try and increase their chances of having more children by going polygamous, in other words, even though the prescription is for polyandry, for a plurality of husbands what you will usually end up with is husband looking for other women. When one looks at permitting polyandry and polygamy, the permission for a woman to have more than one husband and permitting men to have more than one wife, you end up with a whole matrix of people in communities married to each other, where this man is married to three or four or so women and each woman is married to another two or four husbands and each husband is married to another network. You have is a network of marriages that would spread venereal diseases or sexually transmitted diseases, HIV and some very deadly diseases like lightning throughout the community. In other words, it is to the detriment of any society to become polygamous in the sense of being polyandrous and polygamy. So what we find is even in societies that permit the Islamic form of polygamy where a man may marry to three or four women, they have been major health concerns particularly when there is divorce and a woman goes and gets married into another polygamous relationship. So that has its disadvantages but to make it such that women and men are married to each other in a network or matrix within the society would be from a health perspective most disastrous. When it comes to the issue of identification of children very few societies have the opportunity for DNA testing or have it at an affordable rate. In other words, you would have many debates and arguments regarding whose child is this and whose responsible for a particular child. Consequently, it is not surprising that many societies have not carried on with that practice of polygamy in the form of polyandry. When we look at the concerns both for the health of the woman with multiple partners it is more harmful, there is a greater chance of contacting cervical cancer and sexually transmitted disease. So one woman is meeting with multiple partners so frequently. What we also find is the care for the children. When they is doubt regarding the parentage of a child the tendency is for people to withhold love when they are not certain whose child they are actually taking care of and this leads to greater abuse. What you also have is people who have an excuse not to take responsibility for children because they feel that other people would be responsible for their children particularly when they are doubt regarding the parentage. What you will find is a lot of men in particular exploiting women and the moment the woman is expecting they take an excuse of moving to another woman instead of taking responsibility. What you have is if one looks at such an environment in which different types of polygamy are permissible that you allow polyandry just because you allow polygamy what you end up having in this kind of society is the breakup of the whole idea of a family of any type of structure because there is no family unit. Everybody is married to everybody else and the whole values that are tied to having a family get broken down. The whole idea of how is the family to make decisions if there is no such thing as an agreed head of the family. Everybody is married to somebody else and every woman has a man and every man has a woman. So what we find is from a holistic impact assessment of the health, the social, the amount of conflict, abuses, the more you have anything towards polygamy, the greater the chances of having friction than monogamy. And if you move from polygamy of a plurality of wives to a plurality of husbands you even have much greater conflict and this is probably why Islam drew a line after permitting men to marry up to four to not have more than that and not to permit other forms that might culturally be permissible in certain contexts because the harm is greater than the benefit. And so just like the prohibition of alcohol even if some may find benefits in it the existence of greater harm becomes a basis for prohibition and Allah knows best.