Woman in Islamic Shari‘ah
8. Polygamy and Islam
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on the increase that a whole new discipline has
come into being — safety engineering. According to
data collected in 1967, in that year a total of 175,000
people died as the result of accidents in fifty
different countries. Most of these were men.
153
In spite of safety engineering, casualties from
industrial accidents have increased. For instance,
the number of air accidents in 1988 was higher than
ever before. Similarly, experimentation in arsenals
continues to kill people in all industrialized
countries, but the death toll is never made public.
Here again, it is men who have the highest casualty
rate.
For reasons of this nature, women continue to
outnumber men. This difference persists in even the
most developed societies, e.g. in America.
According to data collected in 1967, there were
nearly 7,100,000 more women than men. This means
that even if every single man in America got
married, 7,100,000 women would be left without
husbands.
We give below the data of several western countries
to show the ratio of men to women.
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