Judging Misyar-nikah with modern non-Islamic standards

Submitted by Prashant (India), May 19, 2022 at 18:36

Dear Dr Pipes, My contention that Islam should be judged by non-Islamic standards applies to Misyar marriages also. After reading reader Muhammad Asghar's description of this kind of marriages, it appears to me that Islam does not give much value to monogamous love between a man and a woman and allows for sex as a (mechanical) process for which money can be paid to a woman for sex.

Neither in Asghar's description of this kind of marriages nor in the related Wikipedia page, it is stated that the involved man or woman should not be otherwise married or "misyared". There is an upper limit on the number of Misyar arrangements a man or woman can enter. All women in the historical Muslim harems that we read about may have been "misyared" to the Islamic rulers of the past.

If a woman or man I respect wants me to be one of the two needed witnesses to this kind of martiage, I will have to decline. In general, sex for money and money for sex look like bad ideas to me. But weird are the ways of Islam.

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