Today's journalistic faux pas

[chrishansenhome]

From this story, in and of itself somewhat out-of-the ordinary (about a 104-year-old woman marrying a 33-year-old man [his first marriage, her 21st]), comes this paragraph:

Malaysian Muslim men are allowed by their religion to take up to four wives at a time, but reports of women who marry more than once are rare. Muslim women do not practice polygamy.

I was not living with the illusion that any Muslim women married more than one woman at a time. Obviously the reporter knows something the rest of us do not.

Comments

[spwebdesign.livejournal.com]

That paragraph doesn't imply that. If the reporter had used "one" instead of "once," then yes, but….

[trawnapanda.livejournal.com]

I suspect that our blog hostess is taking "women who commit polygamy" to mean "women who take more than one wife at a time"; but I had a similar (and I suspect the same) construction as spwebdesign: If John marrys Ann and Betty and Cathy and Donna, he is to anyone's understanding practicing polygamy. But what are Ann and Betty and Cathy and Donna doing? Are they not part of the polygamy? and if not, what is the phrase for what A+B+C+D are doing at this point (not John, his wives).

if the verb "practicing polygamy" is parallel to "marry" then are not A+B+C+D practicing polygamy?

But that doesn't work with the quoted paragraph either, since "muslim women don't practice polygamy" implies that they don't get involved in such relationships. Which plainly they do, as the 104yr old woman demonstrates.

the only way I can parse the quoted text to be consistent is if the 104yr old lady is not a muslim, but has married a muslim man.

didn't dr johnson say something about second (third, fourth... 21st) marriage being the triumph of hope over experience?

[chrishansenhome.livejournal.com]

Again, what the reporter meant to say was "Muslim women do not practice polyandry." When a woman is in a multiple marriage, she is not practicing polygamy; her husband is (IMHO, anyway). And marrying more than once in a serial manner is not polygamy in any sense of the word.

Oh, and from the article itself we find that the woman is Muslim, as one of the man's stated reasons for marrying her was to learn Muslim religious tenets from her.

[chrishansenhome.livejournal.com]

Um, marrying more than once (serially) is not polygamy. Thus, what the reporter meant to say was:

Muslim women do not practice polyandry.

[spwebdesign.livejournal.com]

Got it. I focused on the wrong word.

[trawnapanda.livejournal.com]

oh I understood the polygamy/polyandry point you were making above.

but I still don't have an answer to my earlier question (and I really don't know the answer to this): what are the several wives of a man who is practicing polygamy doing? surely ann and betty and cathy and donna are involved in polygamy when they simultaneously are married to john. (and shirley too, if she joins the party)

is this a verb that only goes one way? only the male to the female? what are the females doing? being objects of polygamy? that sounds vaguely like a transitive verb.

-- poozled in trawna

[chrishansenhome.livejournal.com]

I don't believe that, say, a Muslim man's three wives consider that they are married to him and to each other. They are married only to him.

What they are called in total is not something I happen to know. A harem, I suppose, might be an appropriate term.

As I'm not likely to be married to several women at a time, the question and answer are academic.