“Muslim women don’t have a problem with the fact that their husbands have a few other wives,” declared the Iranian ayatollah. I disagreed, and answered him: “I’m a woman, and I can tell you that women do not want to be one of several wives.” Two chador-clad Muslim Iranian women nodded their heads in agreement. The ayatollah – a Shi’ite religious leader and professor of Islamic Law in Teheran – and I – a women’s rights lawyer from Jerusalem – became old hands at sparring at an interfaith conference on Family Law and Religious Law at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy, last spring.
The writer, Sharon Shenhav, is director of the International Jewish Women’s Rights Project, a joint project of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and the International Council of Jewish Women.