Hiyam Darbak, Who Founded an Egyptian Association for Promotion of Polygamy: Every Month, I Encourage My Husband to Marry Another Wife

Following is an interview with Hiyam Darbak, who founded an Egyptian association for the promotion of polygamy, which aired on MBC TV on November 28, 2006:

Interviewer: How did you come up with the idea of founding the "One Wife is Not Enough" association?

Hiyam Darbak: I came up with the idea because of the new statistics in society - the rising rates of women who never married, divorced women, and widows in Arab countries, such as Iraq and Palestine, and in Islamic countries where there are wars and so on. Women without men have become a phenomenon in society, and they constitute time bombs in society – especially the millions of women who never married. There are armies of women who never married in Arab society. This also poses a danger to the morality of society.

[...]

Interviewer: You expect the wife to agree to share her husband with another woman?

Hiyam Darbak: Why not?

Interviewer: Are you married?

Hiyam Darbak: Yes.

Interviewer: Is your husband married to another woman?

Hiyam Darbak: I suggest this to him every month.

Interviewer: So he refuses?

Hiyam Darbak: He refuses because I am sufficiently cultured to keep him to myself.

Interviewer: Now, I've lost you... Your husband... Sorry for getting into your personal life...

Hiyam Darbak: No, go ahead...

Interviewer: ...but I have some questions, and this association was your idea... Your husband refuses to get married because... why exactly?

Hiyam Darbak: Because I'm a woman with full awareness, capable of containing him, but if I find in my family or among my neighbors a woman in need of a man, or a woman who has missed the train of marriage, I will offer her to him.

Interviewer: You will offer her to him every month...

Hiyam Darbak: I will. I had a friend who was over 36 years old, and I asked him: "How so you feel about so-and-so?" When a man marries another woman, he should not turn to someone who is 20, 22, or 23 years old, and who still has a chance [to find a husband on her own]. He should take another wife from one of the three sectors which I care about: Women who never married, young divorcées, and widows.