Polygyny What It Means When African American Muslim Women Share Their Husbands By Debra Majeed (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2015. 193 pages.)

Abstract

Polygyny is titled precisely to reflect the form of plural marriage practiced by
Muslims: one husband with up to four wives, as described in Q. 4:3. Debra
Majeed employs the term living polygyny to describe the experiences of those
involved in such marriages: men with multiple wives, the first or subsequent
wives, those married both civilly and religiously, those only religiously married
in a nikāḥ (Islamic marriage contract) ceremony, publically recognized
marriages, closeted polygynous marriages not publically recognized, and
“back door” marriages in which at least one wife is unknown to the other(s).
The participants discussed in this book presently live in or have been part of
a polygynous marriage.
Polygyny is a qualitative ethnography that utilizes womanist theoretical
approaches through dialogical performance, an approach in which interview
data are dialogues performed through “imaginary interplay” (p. 31) across
participant responses. It also constructs a rich and comprehensive presentation
of her findings in the form of the participants’ voices as well as triangulates
data by using focus groups, surveys, and interviews. However, the methods
require greater detail to specify how the surveys were used. Majeed’s paradigm
is rooted in gender justice, which acknowledges the intersectionality of
all social statuses held by women in these cases: religion, race, gender, marital
status, motherhood, age, class, and ability. She asserts that Muslim womanism
is not only a lens for seeing the world, but also a “way of knowing ...