By Bubacarr A Sankanu, Cologne, Germany
Introduction
I am a bit embarrassed that no man, Gambian, African or otherwise, joined the battle of the sexes going on at Maafanta.com over polygamy.
Perhaps the chauvinists brushed it off as just another feminist gossip. Others might have chosen to ignore it considering that fracas over the Gambia Press Union in Obamastan (USA).
Some could however conclude that bashing our poor President Yahya Jammeh is more convenient that taking on those fire-spitting feminist rebels! Boys, there are no more men left in Europe and North America. The feminists there have succeeded in freezing their balls. Do you want us African boys to share the miserable fate of those white boys?
Sorry whities I do not mean to be racist, but after ten years in your world, I can testify on how your chicks have made you into what the Germans call Weicheier (soft balls, cowards) and tote Hose (dead trousers, nothing on bed)! Take the case of aesthetics for example. The way you Western boys define feminine beauty is different from the way we African guys see beauty. Feminism has made you guys lazy and weak that's why you are promoting those skinny and hungry fashion-photo models as ideals of artificial beauty. We Africans or black men are mad about authentic women with “meat”, great curves, elegant backsides and naturally intimidating mammary glands! A real man must hold on to “meat” during romps. So it is unfair to insist on making Western beauty equally African.
I am not a castrated coward and as a warrior prince, I feel I should spend some time here flirting, smooching and having serious fun with the sweet bad girls and Amazons of Maafanta.com over the subject of polygamy and related man-woman squabbles.
I know the die-hard feminists will declare me wanted for my provocative stance on the perpetual battle of the sexes. But first, I would like to belatedly welcome Maafanta.com to the Gambian/African Cyber Family.
When I received the introductory email on Maafanta.com, I smiled and told myself: “it’s a girls' affair” but after reading the “About Us” page, I was relieved that a new generation of conscious African ladies are ready to correct the mistakes of emancipation including the fanatic vilification of us men.
Because of feminist propaganda, any oestrogen-charged woman who challenges men is celebrated as someone who “knows her rights.” Nonsense! How long can an antelope challenge a lion? A woman who knows her rights tries to understand the nature of men and gives me a kiss!
As I wholeheartedly embrace Maafanta.com, I strongly believe the Publishers and Editors will resist the temptation of letting their unique platform grow into a wailing wall of wild feminists cursing us men round the clock. What we urgently need is the dialogue of the sexes. Then the lack of understanding between men and women is the main cause of the problems of society.
I bet the makers of Maafanta.com will use their brains, beauty and irresistible curves to not just drive us boys crazy but to also help us understand the nature of women. For only when we know how the bad or docile girls function best, we the bad boys can treat them fairly.
For the sake of political correctness, I would like to apologise, especially to the moral hypocrites, for the language of this opinion piece. I deliberately refuse to be conservative, intellectual or academic as I am here to flirt with the ladies from the sweet teenagers to the mature ones ready for plucking. If I should get into the nerves of the moral apostles along the line, so be it. I am an artiste and, a bona-fide artiste provokes. My vocabulary is harmless compared to what you hear from TV hits like “Sex and the City” and “Desperate Housewives.”
The subject of the debate on polygamy centres on nothing but sex. Then the Editor asked if “...women....should share their husbands?” I do not think she is talking about women slicing their husbands into pieces with each woman taking an adored part of the body. The unspoken message is: sharing the sexual pleasure!
Of Humanism, Compassion and Secularism
In our African culture it is a taboo to discuss sexuality aesthetics in public. The conservative hypocrites and the homophobic religious fundamentalists would easily label a sexually confident guy like me who knows the difference between sex and love, a womaniser. I will risk the insult by refusing to limit my arguments to the values of the Abrahamic religions – Islam, Christianity and Islam. As a moderate Muslim, romance junkie and a Prince of Secularism, I will lean heavily on humanism and compassion as my religions and yardsticks. I do not care about any misrepresentation of my character as I am not a hypocrite.
We need Ethics more than religion. Human civilization as we know it is said to be at least 20,000 years old but the organised regions are just young: Islam is 1,400 years, Christianity 2,000, years and Judaism 3,300 old making a collective age of 6,700 years. Only a fool would expect 6,700 years of rigid monotheist propaganda to kill 20,000 year of freedom of choice!
It is therefore not surprising that the 10 commandments of a run-away murderer like Moses are being disobeyed and the moral dictatorship monotheism is being challenged by the Enlightened Peoples of the world. The desert is crazy place that affects ones psyche. Spend some time alone in the desert and after hallucinating you will feel like a prophet. It is just funny that all the so called “great religions” were invented in the anti-life desert by men who were just lucky to have survived dehydration and hallucination! We have a Sarahule (Soninke) saying that “if a lonely monkey claims to have seen God, who is there to dispute him?” You cannot impose morality on people in the name of religion. Then the Muslim God Allah says “let there is no compulsion in religion” (Qur'an 2: 256)
I stand to be corrected, the institution of marriage as we know it today has been engraved on our brains by the teachings of the Abrahamic religions. But Adam and Even were not married! They just lived like man and woman in an open relationship similar to that of French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980) and super feminist Simone de Beauvoir (1908 – 1986)! Show me the sections in the holy scripts that explain Adam and Eve's wedding ceremony with the snake as their best man!
Marrying the religious way is just of one out of many forms of relationships available to mankind. We have monogamy (one man with one wife or one woman with one man), polyandry (one woman with more than one husbands at the same time), polygamy (a man with more than one wife at the same time), polygyny (a man having many concubines/mistresses at the same time), open relationship (both partners, married or not, accept having affairs outside and or three-some sexual exchanges), to name a few. I fully recognize the right of every man and woman to choose the relationships he or she desires. The natural and polytheist religions are democratic here. But the organized monotheist Abrahamic religions are dictatorial as they dictate lifestyles and restrict people's freedom of choice in the name of a fake morality.
Women should realize that the elites of the organized religions are the leading women haters known to mankind. The more conservative they are like Girolamo Savonarola (1452 –1498) and the marauding Hisba Sharia vigilantes of Northern Nigeria, the more anti-women they behave. From the Christian Inquisition to the Muslim Taliban acid attacks on Afghan school girls, women have been and are still at the receiving end of the arrogance of the religious elites.
So my darlings, if you are waiting for the religious leaders to give you your rights, you will melt and rot in your hot pants. Support secularism, follow the examples of Ayan Hirsli Ali of Somalia and Lubna Hussain of Sudan or join my Princely Sankanu Harem I will be operating next to President Zuma's!
The most important job of a woman is to remain sweet. Now tell me: will you rush into the arms of the religious fundamentalists who will beat the hell out of you any time you look sweet or will you choose a secular bad boy like me who will openly celebrate your femininity?
Dilemma of Western exposed African Muslim girls?
Coming to the subject of the day, I have some problems with the formulation of the question: Polygamy in the West. Should African Women in The Diaspora Share Their Husband? The West in my understanding means Europe, North America (Canada & USA), Australia and all other territories of the so-called Industrialized Countries. But then the Diaspora goes beyond the West. It means, originally from Greek, scattered peoples. Africans in Diaspora would therefore include the Afro-Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, Afro-Brazilians, Afro-Arabs and any human being with an African gene living outside the African Continent.
As I do not want to be boringly academic, I will not dissect the question further and thus limit my understanding of the Diaspora to the regions that are geographically known as “The West.” My understanding of “African women” will include any black, mixed-race or white woman who proudly sees herself as African be her Muslim, Christian or traditional African Ifa follower.
But I cannot proceed without dropping the auxiliary verb “should” from the question and argue with the simple form “African women in the Diaspora share their husband!” For I believe African women are already sharing their husbands or boyfriends and I am here to squeeze chilli-pepper onto their eyes so they can see how!
The debate on polygamy among African migrant women in the Diaspora shows the dilemma many Western educated or exposed African Muslim women are facing. On one hand they want to enjoy the individual freedoms of a secular jurisprudence and on the other, keep their traditions and patriarchal religions. Many men would choose to go to Africa to marry local girls and bring them to the West. Once some of those girls get exposed, they run away cooking all kinds of anti-men excuses! Am I wrong here?
The desire to envoy individual freedom especially in marriage makes many girls forget the causes of the pandemic rate of divorce in the monogamous West! The Muslim preachers would say Islam gives men the envious right to enjoy polygamy. Islam, they would add, is a universal religion and since the West or the Diaspora is part of the universe, a Muslim woman living in the West, be her African or otherwise, should not reject polygamy. Doing so would mean rejecting Islam. This takes us into lengthy academic debates over Secular versus Divine (Theocratic) Jurisprudence that I would not like to dwell into for contextual reasons.
We men are naturally promiscuous!
We men are by nature promiscuous. You either accept us the way we are created or you just stay single and sleep with us only when you are tired of using your fingers and the dildos since everyday artificial solo “fast food” can be boring and monotonous!
Nature created us this way so as to continue the process of procreation. Without this primitive biological characteristic of us men, the human race would go extinct.
Anytime we men see an irresistible lady, we go crazy because our natural instincts send us the signal that the lady is an ideal candidate to carry our off-springs. Bondage and marriage are secondary! By collecting women like trophies, we are only performing our primitive biological duty.
When a normal man leaves his wife to deliver in a hospital while he enjoys with another woman, he will be insulted as a heartless cheater. Abraham sent Hagar and her new born-baby into the desert and he was celebrated as a prophet!
Tell me the worst option: leaving a woman to deliver under the care of competent medical personnel or sending her and her freshly-born child away?
Despite the technological and intellectual advances, the humankind remains primitive. Our social rules, regulations and practices are not better than the laws of the jungle. For instance, snatching someone's husband, boyfriend, wife or girlfriend as morally ugly as it sounds, is not a criminal act but a natural one based on the principle of the survival of the fittest!
Natural promiscuity is however no blanc cheque for irresponsible behaviour by us men. We have the responsibility to learn how to practise self-restraint. It is difficult but one has to keep trying. Though I am open-minded and do not mind sleeping with any smart, legally mature, non-smoking, non-drinking, slow food-loving lady (from the PhD down to the innocent village girl) who consensually knows how to keep her might shut like a grave, I am dead scared of Sexually Transmissible Diseases (STDs). I hate condoms but before dropping my pants, I would insist on seeing the passports. I mean, a negative HIV test result and a full medical report on overall health. Then I consider myself a special gift to womanhood and any intelligent woman who knows what she wants would have no problems unpacking me! Body shape, slim or big, does not matter as long as the curves, hips and “meat” can drive me crazy!
I have no experience in multiple partnering as I am yet to date two women at the same time. But if should find myself owning a polygamous or polygynous harem even in Washington D.C. (USA) or Westminster (UK), I will not complain. If the Mormons can have their polygamous fun within the constitutional frameworks of the United States of America (USA), why not me? My African Culture and Islamic Faith give me the right to practice polygamy. I will sue any authority between Seattle and Sumatra that denies me my human right to practice polygamy or polygyny!
Then Western and Universal Secular Values are about the Rule of Law, Diversity, Tolerance, Freedom and Individual Human Rights including the right to ones cultural identity. Having more than one woman is part of our pre-Christian and pre-Islamic African Cultural Identity and it is still modern and futuristic as President Jacob Zuma of South African proves. Monogamy is a foreign concept imposed on us Africans by paedophile missionaries who were lucky to escape punishment for their own clergy sexual misconducts. How many fair-skinned bastards did they leave behind or falsely propagate as “special children or better humans” until we now have a menace of skin-bleaching and plastic surgery among native women?
Their celebrated Western monogamous lifestyle is not better. U.S. talk host David Letterman's confession of sleeping with his female staff is as common as sunshine! Former President Bill Clinton of USA reportedly turned the Oval Office into an “oral office” and dipped cigars into Monica Lewinsky's river of pleasure before smoking them. It is sweet and crazy. If you call it decadent I will throw shoes on you. Do you know what the other political, business and religious leaders across the globe are doing secretly? Ask the lap dancers and the call boys and girls.
I hear our own President Jammeh calling us Gambian men womanizers as if he is a foreigner. My Brother President Jammeh if I may ask: who are you? A Tibetan and The Dalai Lama's deputy monk-in-chief?
When did you undergo voluntary castration? I beg, enjoy your presidential mistresses in your secluded palaces quietly and leave us to have our fun in peace! Are you jealous of our flexibility and freedom of movement?
I disagree with those who call President Barack Obama an exception. Obama is not a Saint and it is too early to judge him as we can only know what transpires behind the curtains of the White House by accident or when an insider breaches the Oath of Secrecy. I am sure Michelle Obama is fighting her own little “war on terror” against all those wannabe Obama mistresses. Then even a one-night-stand with America's First Black President can be more valuable that the Nobel Prizes!
My advice to Michelle is simple: she should use her energy in reducing those bed-time headaches and she should resign to fate. She cannot prevent the “sexcapades” and if they happen she should stay cool, read this piece for consolation and follow the examples of Jackie Kennedy, Queen Elizabeth II, Hillary Clinton and all those ladies who did not run away from their marriages following their husbands' adventures. Then a cheating husband or boyfriend always comes back crawling on his knees. Princess Diana who was yelling around the world as an angelic ambassador of cheated wives was boiling with the anger to avenge or “teach Prince Charles a lesson” until she stupidly lost her life in the arms of a notorious Arab-British playboy!
My ladies, only a dead man is 100% faithful! Do not trust any man, religious or otherwise, who promises you 100% fidelity even if he holds the Bible or the Holy Qur'an. He cannot guarantee it. So if you just cannot accept sharing your partner, kill him! You can alternately castrate him but then be ready to live like a nun!
If you do not want your man to follow anything in skirt or wrappers, reduce the number of your anti-sex headache excuses and stop faking orgasm! Otherwise, your man or boy will run after the next headache-free woman, even if she happens to be your house maid, sister, best friend or co-wife. Remember that we men are as blind as our junior brothers “down under!” We easily follow any woman who succeeds in seducing us! For God has not created us with the genes to resist your allures. We just try.
The body of a woman is the greatest and the most dangerous masterpiece of arts designed by nature to make life bitter-sweet for us men. It is not your fault ladies!
We men are visually stimulated and we fantasize
As nature programmed it, we men are visually stimulated. If you do not want to share your man physically you cannot still stop sharing him mentally. We men are easily tempted and a tempted man is a shared man. The religious fundamentalists are cowards who do not know how to control their temptation. So they insist on covering women from head to toe as if the Taliban Brides(my definition of veiled girls and women) would save them from sinning.
Wake up. Islam has not prescribed any particular dress style, thereby giving us enough flexibility to dress according to our needs, conditions and tastes: "eat what you feel like and wear what you feel like. But avoid two things: extravagance and arrogance." (Bukhari Hadith). The extreme Taliban burka or niqab dress code has nothing to do with Islam but local archaic pre-Islamic tradition. The birth region of Islam (Middle East, Central Asia) is geographically dry and windy. If women do not wear the jilbab (curtain) gowns, the wind and not necessarily men, could disgrace them by stripling them. Remember the Islamic story of Moses and the seven shepherdesses (girls) of Midian who were escorting him to their father prophet Shoaib? Moses was initially walking behind but when the wind exposed the legs of one of the girls, Moses decided to lead them so as not to be sexually tempted. Some clans later adopted this as norm by insisting that women should not lead but always walk one or two steps behind men.
Islam simply said women should cover their hair and body adequately. “O Prophet! Tell your wives and daughters and the believing women that they should draw over themselves their jilbab (outer garments); this will be more conducive to their being recognized (as women) and not harassed.
But God is indeed oft-forgiving, most merciful.” (Holy Qur'an 33:59).
Temptation or “Jarabo” as the Mandingos call it is, no matter how challenging, not a crime and any man with right amount of natural testosterone cannot escape it. Adam and Even were isolated in the Garden of Eden and were tempted not by people but by a snake and the forbidden fruit. The religious cowards who are blaming the dress code of women are being hypocritical.
Temptation in Africa is not that different from what obtains in the West. You share your man any time he watches Beyoncé Knowles shake her hips or gangster rapper 50 Cents and his “candy shop” of skimpy dressed girls! The brain and the fantasies cannot be controlled. If fantasizing is “cheating” then all men including my princely craziness are cheaters! Since you are curious to know, my dream fantasy women regardless of race, religion or social stature should be like Nigerian actress Dakore Egbuson, Afro-American diva Alicia Keys, Latino sweetie Salma Hayek, hot bisexual actress Drew Barrymore, elegant Gambian political stallion FJC, singer Shakira, Arabian night nurse Lydia Khalil of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, crazy girl Queen Latifa (I love crazy and bad girls) and you!
The bikini or sexy under-wears you are putting on are products of our male fantasies originally designed by our brothers Jacques Heim and Louis Reard of France.
Ladies if you do not want your man to fantasise about another women or cheat on you mentally, do not abandon your bin-bin lingerie collections and bedroom accessories. If you need technical assistance, feel free to contact me!
Women are our partners in crime!
Women like complaining about men but they fail to accept the fact that they too are guilty. It takes two to tango, my dear! Did Adam swallow that forbidden fruit all alone? How often did you hear your friends say “my husband/boyfriend slept with another woman?” They hardly say “with another man!” So pouring all the blame on men is bias.
How often do you complain of headache to avoid sex? How often do you fake orgasm? How many men are taking care of children that were secretly produced by other men? As the Serers of SeneGambia would say “only a woman knows the biological father of her child” if we ignore modern genetic tests.
Our African women are lucky that African men can't either afford the genetic tests to verify fatherhood or are reluctant to do so because of the stigma.
There are feminists who say “whatever a man can do, a woman does better!” You want to tell me, women can fool better, cheat better, lie better, corrupt better and f***k better? In political life women have actually proven to be more dictatorial than men. Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom (U.K) was worst than Adolph Hitler of Germany. The difference is that Hitler fought a racist hegemonic war against non-Germans while Thatcher fought an economic war against the working class in the name of Capitalism. The English lords who supported Thatcher were cowards. They were afraid that if they say “stop” to the “iron lady“, she would use her iron to castrate them! Besides, those lousy industrial workers were becoming too much for the industry barons with their endless demands for economic justice. The barons conveniently found in Thatcher the ideal house maid for scrubbing away the industrial mess.
Women leaders emerged in developing counties like Argentina (Evita Peron, Cristina Fernándz de Kirchner), Chile (Michelle Bachelet), Turkey (Tansu Çiller ), Pakistan (Benazir Bhutto), Bangladesh (Begum Khaled Zia), Sri Lanka (Chandrika Kumaratunga), The Philippines (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo), Mozambique (Louis Dias Diogo), to name a few. Tell me: were or are the stewardships of the women leaders better than those of their male colleagues?
The feminists made a lot noise when Mama Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was elected President of Liberia. Is she performing better than Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Salva Kiir of South Sudan, Joseph Kabila of D.R.C (Democratic Republic of The Congo) and all other male leaders who took over war-torn countries? The Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission recently found out that President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was one of the principal backers of Charles Taylor's bloody civil war and thus recommended her banishment from politics. Her reaction was that she was fooled by Charles Taylor. What a beautiful lie! My dear President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, if Charles Taylor can fool a big girl like you it means you owe us an explanation on how you passed your exams!
If you do not want to join Charles Taylor at The Hague, please shut up and govern good. Remember, my lovely mini-state of The Gambia used her meagre resources to accommodate Liberian refugees and to provide both military and civilian personnel for the peace missions of our own Economic Community of African States (ECOWAS) with good big brother Nigeria on the lead. Do not just take our African Solidarity for granted like those ungrateful black South African xenophobes!
Now which feminists dare tell me women are just innocent babies being tortured or cheated by men? We need a new “Feminism 2.0” that respects, loves and recognizes men who active in women advancement. The “Daily Trust African of The Year 2008” Dr. Denis Mukegwe of Bukavu in D.R.Congo is doing more to restore the dignity of women raped during war that the lousy poster girls of feminism. Professor Muhammed Yunus of Bangladesh has, through his microfinance concept, single-handedly uplifted more women out of poverty that the supposedly powerful Oprah Winfrey of USA or Angela Merkel of Germany. The beneficiaries of the programmes of Bill Gates and President Clinton are largely women. The list long.
Please cut “the men are dogs, men are this and men are that” bull crap! Men too are suffering from the lack of jobs, political and economic freedom, heath care and other basic necessities of live. Those young Africans risking the journey to Europe are largely male! Men too have feelings as living beings and they suffer from exhaustions or depression!
Western and Religious Hypocrisy
The Untied States with their conservative puritan religious groups have a vibrant porn industry worth 15 billion U.S. Dollars. Those clergy who shout Jesus' names at Sunday masses and on evangelical TV channels are the lead consumers of American porn. Clergy Sexual Misconducts (CSM) is an open secret in religious groups but they keep pointing fingers at the secular guys and their mistresses.
Baylor University's School of Social Work conducted its first aver nationwide survey on sexual misconducts within religious groups and “found that 3.1 percent of adult women who attend religious services at least once a month have been the victims of clergy sexual misconduct since turning 18. To explain another way, in the average U.S. congregation of 400 adult members, seven women, on average, have been victimized at some point in their adult lives.” See: http://www.baylor.edu/clergysexualmisconduct/
Why is monogamy or celibacy not keeping them faithful and honest?
In Europe, the paedophile case of movie director Roman Polanski is symptomatic of the Continent. Europe is having the largest number of paedophiles and consumers of child pornography on the world. Those sex tourists exploiting chilled between The Caribbean and Thailand are mainly Europeans. Because of feminism, the cowards are afraid of approaching their mature emancipated women and thus fine it easier to molest the kids.
The separated wife of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi accused him of frequenting under-age girls. No one can tell me that serial monogamy (marry today, divorce tomorrow) as practised by the likes of French President Nicolas Sarkozy is better than polygamy!
Because of inferiority complex, we Africans easily join outsiders in insulting our own heritage. I am against harmful traditions that are holding us back but I cannot reject the positive African traditions no matter how controversial. The peoples of the West celebrate their so called “patchwork” family form are modern. For centuries, we Africans have been inheriting/adopting wives and children of blood and non-blood relatives. We do not call it “patchwork” but caring and sharing. Better said, customary social safety net!
When an African man calls his wives “my assets” they say he is reducing them to objects. In Germany, I hear lovers calling each other “meinSchatz” meaning “my treasure” or “my asset” and no one is complaining. Governments call their productive citizens “national assets” without provoking anger. Therefore, if an African man like Jacob Zuma should his wives “my assets” for example, he would only be expressing how he values them in our traditional African sense. How will you feel if you husband or boyfriend calls you “my asset?” Or you prefer to be called “my liability?”
Till problems do us part
The pandemic rate of divorce should be a cause for concern for social policy makers. Today marriage is no longer “till death do us part” at advanced aged but “till the first problems after honeymoon do us part!” Some analysts blame it on emancipation and the modern self-centred consumerism that make people more selfish and egoistic. Some are only expecting to take but not to give. The "50-50" fantasy is a relationship killer as human relationship is naturally parasitic. Each contributes differently but all are rewarded accordingly. The competition for “I did this, so must you do that” kills flexibility, fun, humanity and the sense of belonging.
Whatever, the Roman Catholic Church remains the leading anti-marriage institution. The Celibacy imposed on the clergy by the disputed Council of Elvira in Spain between 300 and 309 AD is against nature. The Church punishes any clergy man or woman who decides to marry but protects the paedophile priests who remain celibate and maintain secret lovers. The latest victim of this double moral is the Dean of the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Bonn, Germany, who was suspended for honestly confessing that he can no longer live without having a woman. The Church is therefore desecrating the sanctity of marriage and cannot expect the Secular World to follow the joke of “till death do us part” by force!
A perfect husband or wife does not exist so please purge out the search for “Mr. or Mrs Right.” If you are not ready for compromise in relationships, remain single till death.
Tim Lahaye, a marriage counsellor says most couples are so much in love they see only the strengths of the other person before marriage.
He adds, “After the novelty of marriage is over, however, each partner's weaknesses (and every human being has them) begin to appear. These weaknesses call for adjustment-that is learning to live with the partner's weaknesses. It is important for a couple to pray to God that they would be gentle, patient, kind and self-controlled while adjusting to these weaknesses.” ”
Bidemi Olaniyi, a relationship counsellor advises men and women to enter into marriage with a firm resolve to accept the partner even with his or her personality weaknesses. She says, “If you are drawn into marriage simply because of your partner's admirable qualities, you must realise there may also be weaknesses or traits you do not like in the person. But each partner needs to have a matured attitude towards the issues.” She adds, “If you expect someone to accept you despite your faults then you must be ready to accept the person - faults and all. Even if the faults are really bad, never attempt to change your partner. Only God can change anyone. Some men become resentful when their wives attempt to change them and some women become rebellious, describing their husbands as oppressors. This could lead to break-ups.”
Olaniyi cautions, “If you know you cannot stand certain weaknesses in a person, better not make a marriage commitment. If however you decide to or you already have, you need to be very prayerful and not be mean to the person as a result.” For more: http://www.modernghana.com/movie/5711/4/dealing-with-personality-conflicts-in-marriage.html
Equality my foot!
A female opponent of polygamy made reference to the Holy Qur'an and the sayings (Hadith) the Prophet Muhammed (SAW) that men cannot treat their wives equally and must therefore stick to monogamy. I beg to differ. Why should we allow all those sweet women to waste way? If the Holy Prophet wanted equality, he should have strictly lived an exemplary monogamous life rather giving “holy excuses” for ending up with nine (9) wives!
Equality is fantasy. Why did God create seven heavens with the highest one supposedly reserved for his best slaves? If God wanted equality he would have created one heaven (paradise) for all!
Women undergo menopause and men don't. Is this equality? The Qur'an says a man can marry up to four wives (polygamy) but woman cannot marry more than one man at the same time (polyandry). Is that equality? The Islamic legal experts say a Muslim man can unilaterally divorce his wife but a woman must seek the approval of an imam, cadi or mufti before walking out of a marriage. Is this equality? The testimony of a woman in Islam is worth haft that of a man, you call this equality? Our society condones sugar-daddies but has problems with sugar-mummies. You call this equality?
I recognize the right of a woman to earn and keep her income. She is fee to study and learn the trade she chooses. Left to me, every woman is free to practice polyandry, sugar-mammysm and sleep with as many men or women (in case of lesbian or bi-sexual) her hips can carry! Yes as I humanist I recognize lesbianism, bi-sexuality and gay lifestyles. I am heterosexual and as long as the women continue to give birth to sweet daughters, I will not develop sexual appetite for a man!
Tell me: if you find yourself as your daddy's or mummy's favourite child will you protest? Even parents find it difficult to treat all their children equally. Why is the Qur'an not saying that parents should remain childless or have only one child since they will never treat all their off-springs equally?
If your husband makes you his favourite wife will you protest and say “my old Casanova, I do not want special treatment. Please treat me and my co-wives as well as your mistresses equally?“
Instead of howling about equality. We should focus on FAIRNESS and treat each human being according. If I should operate a harm comprising a Mandingo girl, a Tukuleur girl, a Wolof girl, a Sarahule girl, a Fulani girl, a Yoruba girl, a Calabar girl, a Zulu girl, a Muslim girl, a Christian girl, etc, I will not treat them equally but fairly. I will consider their ethnic and religious backgrounds as I know a Mandingo girl had an upbringing different from that of the Calabar or Zulu girl! A white girl is trained differently from an Afro-American girl. I cannot therefore treat them equally if I want the white to behave black and the black to behave white. I have to be fair by considering their respective heritages, strengths and weakness.
The Zulu men often called their first wives “the one who keeps the home together.” They have more right, authority and privileges according the African Zulu tradition. Since they are ready to share, they help her husbands is picking additional wives!
By and large, we have to be careful with the way people interpret the religious verses based on the superficial wordings. We have to read between the lines and understand the deeper meanings rather that just follow the face values. The Qur'an says men can beat their wives. Does that mean we should turn your soft feminine bodies into drums? If I should apply the beating rules, I will not go beyond two sweet disciplinary slaps or bottom-tapping. I do not think even the conversation feminists would call my modus operandi violent as it is harmless compared to the bottom-spankings during romps!
I know women solidarity stops when it comes to sharing the husband or boyfriend. But those four South African women who agree to marry one man at the same time are real role models of 21st Century Feminism! I am proud of them for defending their traditional African culture of sharing. Their statuses as co-wives would earn them more social respect than those of shadowy mistresses. A real African woman is not afraid of sharing her husband or boyfriend! The Zulu, Yoruba, Calabar, Wolof, Bambara and Kanuri women, to name a few have proven that they can share their husbands!
Those Kenyan women activists who placed sex bans on their husbands ended up of helping the local commercial sex workers and the mistresses of their husbands. I challenge the initiators of that laughable sex strike to come out and explain their rare silence. What happened to the lousy bluffs they were making while announcing their bed ban on their husband?
Demystifying Virginity
I fully agree with my Amazon sister Ayan Hirsli Ali that virginity just like female genital cutting should be abandoned as it is promoting violence against women. Article 4 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights of 1981 says “Human beings are inviolable. Every human being shall be entitled to respect for his life and the integrity of his person. No one may be arbitrarily deprived of this right.”
For the mothers who are reading, I am not out to spoil your daughters or propagate promiscuity. I am not wishing you bad luck but if your sweet daughter looses her virginity through shock, accident, rape, sickness or abuse by a paedophile and your community starts insulting you and your daughter, then you will say “that bastard Bubacarr Sankanu was right!” The moral hypocrisy of our society has become so pervasive that any loss of virginity is automatically associated with pre-marital sex. No one cares to look at the possible non-sexual causes.
Therefore, the near mystical perception of virginity needs to be reviewed. A virgin who, because of taboos, was not taught about sexuality even in theory, has no idea or sexual experience. So if a man wants a virgin, he should not complain that his virgin wife cannot satisfy him on bed. If he wants a ripe or an experienced woman who can satisfy him, he should either forget about the “virgin status” or train the virgin wife on the preferred sexual techniques for a happy matrimonial sex.
The whole morality charade is insulting in that the men who dream of marrying virgins have no problems running after widows, divorcees, singles, their friends' wives and all other women who already “know how to sleep with a man.” We have a mentality problem here to fix!
This hoax over chastity for women was initiated by some self-styled purists who cannot just accept a sexually confident woman. Men are allowed to sleep with as many women they choose before marriage but a woman who does that is insulted as a whore.
To all the ladies who guarded their chastity before marriage I ask: are the hypocritical praises your family and in-laws poured on you on your wedding night continuing? Has your virginity or chastity prevented your husband from maltreating you, taking an additional wife or running after other women with or without your knowledge?
I was very happy when I read that in the equally hypocritical Arab countries, Virginity Faking Kits (VFKs) are selling faster than lipsticks. The demand is so huge that the moral police in countries like Egypt are talking of banning the kits. To my sweet Arab girls, bravo. Keep the up the fight against your “Arabian nightmare” and if you need help in smuggling in more virginity faking kits, feel free to contact me.
I would like to invite all concerned parties to join me in launching an international solidarity campaign to buy and distribute virginity faking kits among girls in hypocritical societies/communities who might need them. It will succeed just like the campaigns for contraceptives and safer sex. Let us help save them and their mothers from cultural hypocrisy.
Who is afraid of a powerful woman?
I partly agree with matured women who said men are afraid of conscious, educated and or powerful women. Some men are just useless. Others are simply men by mere definition. When a woman tell them “no”, they go wild and start spreading lies about her. Only cowards are afraid of hearing “no” from women!
As I hinted earlier, countless African men in the West (Canada, USA, and Europe) love going home to marry home girls thinking that they will obey them more than the girls already in the West, migrants or naturally born. To their shock once some of those home girls get exposed, they run away. Feel free to call me a liar if you think what I am saying just not true.
Of course there are exceptions and some home girls from Africa have challenged all odds, rejected bad friends and stood by their men in good and bad times without running away. I was impressed when I heard an African woman in New York City say, “I need to seek my husband’s approval to attend this event.... He brought me here, sponsored me through college... I must obey him....!”
The bottom line is: a woman is a woman regardless of social standing and a real man should be able to mould a woman without domestic violence. There is no significant difference between that cum laude college girl and the fruit-selling girl from say, the Kibera slums of Nairobi, Kenya. Everything depends on how you trim each of them. A wild cat like model Naomi Campbell can be domesticated just like sharp-tongued talk show host Oprah Winfrey!
Boys trust me, a powerful, educated, rich, conscious or rebellious woman can become a docile wife just like the innocent home girl. Have faith in your natural testosterones!
Forget the feminist bluffs. They are just show! A real man does not get angry when a woman tell him “no.” For the “no” of a woman is as insignificant as a hen's run from a knife! Yes madam, I am a crazy boy!
The heart loves more!
I hear some women who oppose polygamy saying “the heart can only love one person at a time time.” So they will not share their husbands. I do not know which crazy cardiologist told them that and why has this cardiologist not won the Nobel Prize for Medicine!
Look, the heart is one of the most tolerant and flexible human organs that can accommodate all kinds of feelings. The way you love your mum is different from the way you love your dad, husband/boyfriend, sister, aunt and favourite musician or movie star! Where do you squeeze the love for all these people if not in your heart? In your hand bags? The same heart has space for hatred or resentment. Where do you store your resentment of your inquisitive mother or sister-in-law?
If you are scared of having a co-wife just say so but stop hiding behind foolish excuses as bad foxes like me will dig you out!
Conclusion
My dear ladies. A perfect relationship does not exist in real life. Be open-minded and make the best of whatever relationship you find yourselves in be it in polygamy, monogamy, polygyny, polyandry or open relationship.
I would not conclude without expressing my love for President Jacob Zuma of South Africa. I will not kill for Zuma but I will defend his lifestyle with the last drop of my blood. I love Jacob Zuma not just because he is proudly living according to his Zulu tradition but also for the fact that he, like Muhammed Abubakar Bello Masaba of Northern Nigeria with his eighty six (86) wives, is a typical victim of cultural and moral hypocrisy in Africa. I will remain Zuma and Masaba's publicly confessed fan forever, though I might not copy them. I know every correct man secretly wishes himself a harem like theirs. If you deny it boys then you are either sick, impotent or castrated!
Most of those lousy hypocrites have no idea about the authentic African Culture they claim to be defending against foreign invasion. It is therefore not surprising that the so called anti-obscenity laws they promulgate in order to protect African culture often fail. A man in the church cannot tell us what is African or not because the Holy Bible he would be quoting is an uninvited foreign import forced on the African psyche. Same goes for the man in the mosque.
Many Africans, especially in influential policy making and social positions in the urban areas are out of touch with their Authentic African Values. Someone like President Jacob Zuma of South Africa who is ready to defend his rich African Values despite receiving massive insults is a rare breed among African ruling elites of the day.
Long live Jacob Zuma. God Bless Polygamy!
Your Warrior Prince and Real Last Man Standing!
Bubacarr A Sankanu
African Council For Arts and Culture (AFCAC) e.V.
Postfach 800144
D-51001 Cologne, Germany
Tel.: +4915204441246
Fax: +492219646412
Site:www.africac.org