TUNISIA: Goodbye to Four Wives

As one of its first acts as an independent nation, the new Moslem-dominated state of Tunisia this week abolished plural marriage (up to four wives at any one time) sanctioned for Moslems by the Koran and by the example of Prophet Mohammed. “These measures have been taken to better protect the home, the base of society,” announced Premier Habib Bourguiba, an Arab who has but one wife, a Frenchwoman. He added that girls would no longer be permitted to become child-brides at 14 or less, that youths and girls over 20 need no longer get parental consent to marry, that male Tunisians must give up the right to divorce wives by telling them three times to go, instead must plead their cases in court.

Tunisia thus becomes the second predominantly Moslem state to reform its marriage laws (the first was Kemal Ataturk’s Turkey). But the abolition of polygamy, the Tunisian government assured everybody, would not be retroactive: those who have four wives may keep them.