CAIRO — Egyptian bodybuilding champion Mamdouh al-Subaie, also known as Big Ramy and winner of the Mr. Olympia 2021 championship, topped search engines over the past few days following the announcement of his second marriage.
Activists on social media circulated on Nov. 19 photos of the bodybuilder’s second wedding. While some supported the marriage on the grounds that a man has the right to marry another woman, others opposed it on the grounds that his first wife only learned of the news through the press.
In conjunction with the controversy over Big Ramy’s second marriage, media and human rights activists launched an attack on the professor of Sharia at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Mabrouk Attia, over his televised statements made two years ago but only now circulated in the wake of Big Ramy’s marriage. In the statements, Attia said that a woman has no right to ask for divorce if her husband marries another woman, and if the first wife asks for divorce for this reason, her punishment shall be Hell on the Day of Resurrection.
He added that a man is permitted in Islam to marry a second, third and fourth wife, and there is nothing wrong with that in Sharia as long as he is able to provide for them. He said that the first wife only has the right to ask for divorce in the event that her husband beats her or fails to provide for her, but should the first wife find herself harmed by the second marriage, what she can ask for is khula, not divorce.
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