The rumour travelled faster than the law itself, which is not unusual in a country where Facebook often functions as a parallel court and photo cards enjoy more authority than statutes. According to this viral wisdom, Muslim men in Bangladesh have apparently been liberated from the tiresome burden of seeking their wives’ permission before marrying again. The High Court, it was said, had finally torn up the rulebook, unlocked the gates of polygamy, and ushered in an era of matrimonial free trade. Reality, as usual, is less cinematic and far more inconvenient for those who prefer legal shortcuts.
The actual legal position remains stubbornly boring. The Muslim Family Law Ordinance of 1961 still stands, unmoved by online enthusiasm. The requirement of approaching the Arbitration Council, explaining the necessity of remarriage, and confirming the consent of the existing wife or wives has not evaporated overnight. No new judicial revolution has taken place. What has changed is the public imagination, which has managed to convert the dismissal of a writ petition into a wholesale rewriting of family law. It is a reminder that in Bangladesh, legal illiteracy is not merely a gap in knowledge but a thriving cottage industry.
A legal framework designed to regulate polygamy, restrict arbitrariness, and protect women’s rights has been repackaged as a license for unchecked male desire. The High Court judgment did not declare wives irrelevant. It upheld a process that, however imperfect, insists on justification, scrutiny, and institutional oversight. Yet the public takeaway was that permission is no longer required. This is not a misunderstanding; it is a wilful fantasy, one that tells us more about social attitudes than about judicial intent.
At the heart of the controversy lies a deeper discomfort with regulation itself. The Arbitration Council is often portrayed as a bureaucratic nuisance, an obstacle between a man and his second marriage. But the very existence of this mechanism reflects a long historical struggle to reconcile religious allowances with social justice. Islamic jurisprudence, when read beyond selective convenience, embeds polygamy within strict moral and material conditions. Modern family law attempted to translate those ethical restraints into administrative procedure. The Council is not an enemy of faith; it is a reminder that rights come with responsibilities, even when wrapped in religious language.
The viral narrative also exposes a peculiar anxiety about consent. The idea that a wife’s agreement matters is treated by some as an affront to tradition, as if acknowledging her agency somehow contaminates masculinity. This discomfort echoes Simone de Beauvoir’s observation that patriarchy often survives by presenting male privilege as destiny rather than choice. When the law insists on consent, it disrupts that illusion. It forces the would be groomed to articulate reasons, confront consequences, and face the person most affected by his decision. Small wonder, then, that the law is recast as optional in popular storytelling.
Sarcasm becomes unavoidable when one notices how eagerly the rumour was celebrated. The speed with which it spread suggests a pent-up desire for legal absolution. The message was not merely that permission is unnecessary; it was that accountability itself is outdated. In this sense, the episode mirrors Albert Camus’s exploration of rebellion stripped of responsibility. Freedom, when detached from ethical restraint, quickly mutates into absurdity. The fantasy of consequence free remarriage belongs firmly in that absurd realm.
The legal reality is, in fact, less romantic and more sobering. A marriage without the Arbitration Council’s permission faces serious consequences, from immediate financial liabilities to criminal sanctions. Registration remains mandatory, and registration without permission is a legal dead end. The system may be flawed, unevenly enforced, and vulnerable to manipulation, but it exists. To pretend otherwise is to confuse desire with doctrine.
There is also a quieter irony. Those celebrating the imagined collapse of consent rarely consider the exceptions already embedded in the law. Situations involving infertility, disability, or prolonged absence allow the Council to act even without a wife’s consent. These provisions acknowledge human complexity while resisting blanket authority. They are case based, not carte blanche. Yet nuance does not travel well on social media, where outrage prefers absolutes and complexity is dismissed as elitist hair splitting.
What is perhaps most troubling is how easily women’s voices disappear in this uproar. The conversation has focused on whether men can marry again without permission, not on why the law insists on asking women in the first place. Consent is treated as a procedural hurdle rather than a recognition of shared life, shared risk, and shared dignity. When the law is misrepresented as removing that requirement, the erasure feels symbolic as well as legal.
The High Court judgment, stripped of sensationalism, reaffirmed a balance. It recognised that the law neither automatically permits nor arbitrarily forbids polygamy. It entrusted the Arbitration Council with discretion, not dominance. It resisted unilateralism. In doing so, it upheld a vision of family law that is neither blindly permissive nor punitively restrictive. That vision may not satisfy those looking for easy answers, but law was never meant to be easy.
The episode leaves us with an uncomfortable mirror. The real issue is not whether a wife’s permission is legally required. It is why so many people were eager to believe that it no longer is. That eagerness reflects a social impatience with accountability and a persistent reluctance to see women as legal subjects rather than obstacles. Until that changes, rumours will continue to thrive, judgments will be misread, and consent will be treated as optional whenever it becomes inconvenient.
In the end, the law remains where it was, quietly insisting on process while the internet shouts about liberation. Perhaps that is fitting. Law moves slowly because it must. Rumours move fast because they can. Between the two lies a society still negotiating whether marriage is a shared institution or a unilateral privilege. The answer, inconvenient as it may be, is written not in viral photo cards but in statutes that stubbornly refuse to disappear.
The writer is an academic, journalist, and political analyst
