Polygamy is sanctioned by the Qur’an (4:3) and adoption is forbidden — see Qur’an 33:4 and 33:37-40, which refers obliquely to Muhammad’s marriage to the ex-wife of his adopted son Zayd. The canonical Islamic story of this episode has Allah commanding Muhammad to marry Zayd’s ex-wife in order to show that adoption is illegitimate. Critics of Muhammad throughout history have held this to be a contrived excuse that allowed Muhammad to avoid the laws of consanguinity in order to satisfy his lust — but in any case, adoption has been ever after forbidden in Islamic law. In my new book Did Muhammad Exist? I argue that the whole story was invented in order to demonstrate that Muhammad has no son, either adopted or natural, and (given the Qur’an’s assumption that all the prophets are blood relatives of one another) that therefore he is the final prophet. Either way, adoption is a goner in Islam, and these moves by the “Salvation Front” in Tunisia are yet another sign of that country’s slide toward Sharia. Yes, I tried to tell you: “Tunisia: Salafite party calls for polygamy and halt to adoptions,” from Adnkronos, May 23 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
Tunis, 23 May (AKI) – The recently legalised Tunisian Salafite party ‘Jabhet al-Islah’ has called for polygamy to be allowed and adoption to be outlawed.
“It is no longer the time for armed jihad (holy war). We don’t intend to use force to stop the sale of alcohol or the wearing of bikinis on the beaches. But we will not tolerate any atatck [sic] on the symbols of Islam,” the party’s president Khouja Mohamed told Tunisian daily Le Temps daily Wednesay in an interview.
Protests erupted in Tunisia last October after official election results showed that the country’s Islamist party Ennahda had won the first democratic elections since the Arab Spring uprisings, taking 41.47 percent of the vote and 90 seats in the new 217-member assembly.
The assembly has been tasked with rewriting the constitution, appointing a president and forming a caretaker government. Its nearest rival, the secularist Congress for the Republic, won 30 seats.
Jabhet al-Islah (The Salvation Front) admits it is the successor of the Tunisian Salvation Front party, which was founded in the 1980s and put on a US list of terrorist organisations.
But the party says it does not reject pluralism, while claiming that religion and politics cannot be separated.
“We believe Islam is a religion of democracy and freedom,” Mohamed said.
Unless you’re a woman or a non-Muslim.