Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - Malaysia is moving to protect the financial rights of first wives whose husbands take another spouse in this mainly Muslim country where polygamy is legal, reports said Wednesday.
Under the proposed changes to Syariah law which applies to Muslim Malays, wives can ask for their share of assets, including property, acquired the during the marriage in the event the husband takes an additional wife.
"The court will ensure that half the proceeds from property which they helped purchase will go to them," Syariah Judiciary Department director-general Sheikh Ghazali Abdul Rahman told the New Straits Times.
"If the husbands cannot meet this requirement, they can forget about taking another wife," he said of the amendment to the Islamic family law which will be tabled in parliament later this month.
Ghazali said at a conference on Syariah law that the changes were designed to prevent Muslim women from losing the assets they built up during the marriage in favour of the husband or his new wives.
"The present wife or wives will not lose all if the husband takes another wife," he said.
"As husbands, they must provide equal affection and treatment to their wives but the property has to be divided according to the wives' contribution."
Ghazali said that under the reforms, the new wives will also be called before the Syariah court to explain their decision and be informed of their rights within the marriage.
Malaysian Muslim men are allowed four wives under Islamic law, but a recent survey has found that the majority are satisfied with just one spouse.
The poll showed that nearly 90 percent of Muslim men are one-woman men, while only five percent have two wives and 4.3 percent have three.
While bigamy is outlawed in the multicultural nation, the survey also found that four percent of Chinese men have two wives and three percent of Indian men have two wives.