Polygamy in Islam and other religions

Oscar wilde said, " "Bigamy is having one spouse too many. Marriage is the same."

Theres a few issues here, in the current period polygamy is seen as something strange, yet it is okay for a man to have a mistress or girlfriend outside his marriage.

Islam is a religion not just for this time but all time therefore polygamy maybe needed in some times not others. Due to the circumstances of that time, After the 2nd world war the German said that polygamy was permissible because of a shortage of men. In England there was such a thing called trigamy which was when a man married three times, this occurred here from the 7th to 19th centuries.

Philip Kilbride, an American anthropologist of Roman Catholic heritage, in his provocative book, Plural Marriage for our Time, proposes polygamy as a solution to some of the ills of the American society at large. He argues that plural marriage may serve as a potential alternative for divorce in many cases in order to obviate the damaging impact of divorce on many children. He maintains that many divorces are caused by the rampant extramarital affairs in the American society. According to Kilbride, ending an extramarital affair in a polygamous marriage, rather than in a divorce, is better for the children, "Children would be better served if family augmentation rather than only separation and dissolution were seen as options."

According to the Ethnographic Atlas Codebook, of the 1231 societies noted, 186 were monogamous. 453 had occasional polygamy, 588 had more frequent polygamy, and 4 had polyandry.

In Judaism, it was outlawed in the 11th century, Christianity
Saint Augustine saw a conflict with Old Testament polygamy, and wrote about it in The Good of Marriage (chapter 15, paragraph 17), where he stated that though it "was lawful among the ancient fathers: whether it be lawful now also, I would not hastily pronounce. For there is not now necessity of begetting children, as there then was, when, even when wives bear children, it was allowed, in order to a more numerous posterity, to marry other wives in addition, which now is certainly not lawful." He declined to judge the patriarchs, but did not deduce from their practice the ongoing acceptability of polygamy. In another place, he wrote, "Now indeed in our time, and in keeping with Roman custom, it is no longer allowed to take another wife, so as to have more than one wife living [emphasis added]."

The history of Mormon polygamy begins with claims that Mormonism founder Joseph Smith received a revelation from God on July 17, 1831 that some Mormon men would be commanded to practice "plural marriage". The July 12, 1843 recording of a Smith revelation on plural marriage is now canonized as scripture in the Doctrine and Covenants by the LDS Church[24].

In Islam, polygamy is allowed, with the specific limitation that men can only have up to four wives at any one time. However, the Qur'an specifically states that men who choose this route must deal with their wives as fairly as possible, doing everything that they can to spend equal amounts of time, money on each one of them. Although many Muslim countries still retain traditional Islamic law which permits polygamy, certain elements within Islam challenge its acceptability. For example, polygamy in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Syria, and Lebanon is prohibited by law. In other countries they have to prove their ability to look after the woman, in terms of housing and expenditure.

Thanks for asking the question because if you didn't then I wouldn't have looked into all this! The reason why women cannot have several men at the same time is because it causes friction that will cause murder and we cannot be sure you the child belongs to, even DNA testing is not as reliable as first thought.