The second and main objection to Moslem custom is the marriage-system which begins with a girl being wedded to a man whom she knows only by hearsay. This was the habit of our forbears not many generations ago, and it still prevails amongst noble houses in Southern Europe, where a lengthened study of it leaves me doubtful whether the “love-marriage,” as it is called, or wedlock with an utter stranger, evidently the two extremes, is likely to prove the happier. The “sister-wife” is or would be a sore trial to monogamic races like those of Northern Europe, where Caia, all but the equal of Caius in most points mental and physical and superior in some, not unfrequently proves herself the “man of the family,” the “only man in the boat.” But in the East, where the sex is far more delicate, where a girl is brought up in polygamy, where religious reasons separate her from her husband, during pregnancy and lactation, for three successive years; and where often enough like the Mormon damsel she would hesitate to “nigger it with a one-wife-man,” the case assumes a very different aspect and the load, if burden it be, falls comparatively light. Lastly, the “patriarchal household” is mostly confined to the grandee and the richard, whilst Holy Law and public opinion, neither of which can openly be disregarded, assign command of the household to the _equal_ or first wife and jealously guard the rights and privileges of the others.
Mirza Abu Talib “the Persian Prince”[348] offers six reasons why “the liberty of the Asiatic women appears less than that of the Europeans,” ending with,
I’ll fondly place on either eye The man that can to this reply.
He then lays down eight points in which the Moslem wife has greatly the advantage over her Christian sisterhood; and we may take his first as a specimen. Custom, not contrary to law, invests the Mohammedan mother with despotic government of the homestead, slaves, servants and children, especially the latter: she alone directs their early education, their choice of faith, their marriage and their establishment in life; and in case of divorce she takes the daughters, the sons going to the sire. She has also liberty to leave her home, not only for one or two nights, but for a week or a fortnight, without consulting her husband; and whilst she visits a strange household, the master and all males above fifteen are forbidden the Harem. But the main point in favour of the Moslem wife is her being a “legal sharer”: inheritance is secured to her by Koranic law; she must be dowered by the bridegroom to legalise marriage and all she gains is secured to her; whereas in England a “Married Woman’s Property Act” was completed only in 1882 after many centuries of the grossest abuses.