Even if it be half a home that the women and children find in a polygamous family, it is better than no home at all. Moreover, a community the ranks of whose fighting men were daily dwindling stood in urgent need of increasing its numbers by all possible means, and hence also it was necessary to provide a home for the widows so that they might be helpful in strengthening the numerical position of the community. The moral aspect of the question is not the least important. The war had decimated the male population and the number of women exceeded that of men. This excess, if not provided with a home, would have led to moral depravity, which is the greatest danger to a civilization like that of Islām, which is based on morality.

The question of war is not peculiar to one age or one country. It is a question which affects the whole of humanity for all ages to come. War must always be a source of decrease in the number of males, bringing about a corresponding increase in the number of females and a solution will have to be sought by all well-wishers of humanity for the problem of the excess of women over men. Monogamy is undoubtedly a right rule of life under normal conditions, but when abnormal conditions are brought about by the excess of females over males, monogamy fails, and it is only through a limited polygamy that this difficulty can be solved. Europe is to-day confronted with that question, independently of war, and war only aggravates its seriousness. Professions may be opened up for women to enable them to earn bread, and Islām has never closed the door of any profession against women. But the crux of the question is not the provision of bread but the provision of a home-life and that question cannot be solved without polygamy.

It may be added here that polygamy in Islām is, both in theory and in practice, an exception, not a rule, and as an exception it is a remedy for many of the evils of modern civilization. It is not only the preponderance of females over males that necessitates polygamy in certain cases, but there is a variety of other circumstances which require polygamy to be adopted under exceptional circumstances, not only for the moral but also the physical welfare of society. Prostitution, which is on the increase with the advancement of ‘civilization’, and which is eating into it like a canker, with its