Husband treats his family with two wives as isolated marriages
28-7-2004 | IslamWeb
Question:
My children refuse to talk or deal with their father's second wife.i have tried to talk to them but to no avail. My husband says just to leave them. We live in the same house in different apartments. She delivered twins recently, but the father has not spoken to my children about the birth or even brought the children into the house. He expect to avoid all complications and me to deal with his marriage and tell the children.
Answer:
Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds; and may His blessings and peace be upon our Prophet Muhammad and upon all his Family and Companions.
Islam urges the man to marry more than one wife if he is able to deal justly with them. Polygamy has many advantages. It helps women keep their chastity, can be a means of increasing progeny, etc….
You might have realized these great interests; hence you took this noble stand with your husband and tried to convince your children to keep good contacts with their step-mother. So, we commend you very much for this great stand, which is rare among ladies. We ask Allah to give you great reward for it and make you delighted with your husband and children.
It should be noted here that you are all one family under the leadership of the father. So, it is his responsibility to make sure that everyone in this family assumes his/her responsibilities fully including spreading an environment of love, trust and affection between all the members of this family.
He can do that by gathering the family wherever possible and getting them to do things together. This will make them feel more linked hence the gap between the children and their step-mother will get narrower and narrower.
On the other hand, we recommend that you persevere on advising your children to talk to their step-mother unless there is fear of greater mischief. Remind them that their severing relations with her could lead to disobedience as it might be against their father's wish. Severing kinship relations with their step-brothers and sisters is yet another sin.
Finally, we advise the father to do his best to make his children like and respect their stepmother as well as their stepbrothers and sisters.
Allah knows best.