Nearly all Middle Eastern states retain legal polygamy and restrictive intermarriage rules.

Evidence

It is interesting to learn that only three countries in the area have formally outlawed polygamy—Turkey, Tunisia, and Israel. The list is noteworthy. All the rest, including the revolutionary and “progressive” states, have retained legal polygamy, and for the most part have also retained the Islamic rule of law by which a Muslim man may marry a non-Muslim woman, but a non-Muslim man may not in any circumstances marry a Muslim woman. In Israel, we are told, the law forbidding polygamy was challenged in the supreme court by a Muslim citizen, who claimed that it violated freedom of religion. His plea was rejected, on the ground that Islam permits polygamy, but does not require it. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1315

Categorization

• XREF: The legal asymmetry in marriage echoes the ‘law as a central part of faith’ point from the prior paragraph — Islamic law preserved as core even amid revolutionary ideology.