Gaza: the many wives of Nizar Ghayan

One of the more puzzling viewpoints of our cultural relativist and (self-described) progressive friends is that they insist on telling us that values of the East… or more specifically the Islamic Middle East… are just as good as ours, while at the same time reminding us of the paramount importance of the equality of women, gays, etc., lest we be slack in that regard.  

Contradiction?  Well, we could ignore this.  After all, consistency is the hobgoblin and all that.. But along comes the assassination of Hamas leader Nizar Ghayan in Gaza today and we learn the poor benighted ex-fellow had four wives (now apparently defunct along with him) – or, in the words of Haaretz, “at least four“: Earlier Thursday, an Israeli aircraft killed a high-ranking Hamas official in Gaza along with nine women, including at least four wives, and 11 of his children, in the first major assassination since the IDF launched Operation Cast Lead on Saturday. 

It had always been my understanding that Islam permits only four wives, even for powerful thugs like Ghayan who was apparently responsible for multiple suicide bombings as well as the murder of a good number of his fellow Palestinians in the reviled (by Hamas) Palestinian Authority. Or so the religion dictates.  But don’t, with all these extra wives floating about, think for a minute there are orgies going on in Hamastan.  As the Wiki tells us: Multiple marriages are a heavy responsibility on the male. It is not a pleasure trip as some people may assume. Some even imagine all kinds of sexual exploits involving a man and his wives altogether. However, such activity is not permissible in Islam. A man must divide his time equally among his wives. He may, for example, spend one night with each wife on a rotating schedule.

Now here’s an interesting possibility. Evidently, again according to Haaretz, the Israelis had given one of their telephonic warnings to the residents of Casa Ghayan that they were about to bomb his warlordness’ manse. Normally, the aforementioned residents scatter (wouldn’t you?) or, at the least, go up on the roof and make a conspicuous presence to the Israelis in hopes their guilty Jewish pilots will turn away.  But this time it didn’t happen.  Why?  Could poor Nizar have been in a quandary, trying out to figure out how to “divide his time equally among his wives,” skulking about in the corridor between the bedrooms and then poof?  [Why don’t you consult Gloria Steinem about that?-ed.  I knew you had a sense of humor.]

And so it goes.  Nicolas Sarkozy complains about the lack of “proportionality,” but those of us with a different take, say “Bravo, IAF!”  You are ridding the world of a psychotic religious murderer before he kills more people – Jews and Arabs.  More, please.