I am not a Muslim and cannot read Arabic, thus my understanding of Islam is obviously limited. So if I offend any Muslims with this letter, I would like to apologise now.

However, I feel non-Muslims should not be dismissively excluded from discussing Islamic beliefs because they can sometimes offer insights which ordinary Muslims may not be aware of.

I have discussed the issue of polygyny and Islam before with my family and was pleased to realise from Ming Hoe's letter (More questions on polygyny) that we're not the only ones to notice one simple fact: Based on our interpretation, Islam seems to be against polygyny, not for it.

The Quranic verse is often quoted to show that Islam allows polygyny. According to the verse, polygyny is allowed only if one can be fair or just to all wives. Can any normal human being claim that they are fair to all wives? Given that it is nearly impossible for judges, who are supposed to ignore all their emotions, to be totally fair to everyone before their court; can a man who is not supposed to ignore all his emotions ever be totally fair to all his wives?

Even the issue of time sharing is not as simple as it seems. If you spend one week with one wife, the next week with another wife, this may seem fair but is it? Quantity of time is not the same as quality of the time.

When we get to the issue of one's emotion we have even more problems. Can anyone really claim that they love the wives equally? Perhaps some men can try to do so and can even convince themselves that they have achieved it but it does not mean it is true. The fact is that since the wives are different people, the way their husband feels about them is always going to be different.

Some would argue that the Prophet did not mean for us to be totally fair, just to be reasonably so. But then, why must this be so? The fact that the prophets practised polygyny doesn't mean that normal human beings should be allowed too.