Wednesday, 29 Oct, 2008 Offbeat

After the wife of a Malaysian Muslin failed to find her husband a new younger wife, the man assaulted her and said he would shoot her.

Mohamad Haris Daud, who works as a local police chief in Kuantan, which is the state capital of Pahang, the biggest state in Malaysia, said that the 57-year-old man forced his wife, aged 60, to persuade a woman in her 30s to be his second wife, NEWS.com.au reports.

The police officer said that when the frightened wife found the woman, she discovered that she was already married.

"After she told her husband that the woman was married, he ran amok and started beating her and threatened to cut her with a machete'', Malay-language "Utusan Malaysia" newspaper quoted local police chief as saying.

After the man's wife was unsuccessful with finding consent from another woman, he said he would kill her with a shotgun.

It is worth mentioning that Chief Mohamad is also a security guard and member of civil volunteer corps RELA. The latter specializes on illegal immigrants.

In Malaysia, Muslim men have the right to have up to five wives. However, activists and women's groups highly criticize polygamy, saying that it is cruel and that polygamy has deviated from its initial purpose in Islam, i.e. to defend widows and orphans. Sixty percent of Malaysians (from a population of 27 million people) are Muslims, and Islam is the country's official religion. It is illegal for a non-Muslim to have more than one wife.

Currently Malaysian police is investigating the case, having the angry husband detained.