In Mid-September a Nigerian Muslim court detained an 84 year old Islamic preacher with 86 wives after he failed to heed the call by local leaders to divorce all but four of them. (wow one and a bit wives for every year of his life!)

Mohamed Bello was charged with “insulting religious creed” and “unlawful marriages” after local chiefs and Muslim leaders gave him until September 7 to comply with Islamic sharia law, which allows a man to have no more than four wives at a time.

The preacher, who lives with his wives and some 170 children in the town of Bida, pleaded not guilty to the charges at an Upper Sharia Court in the state capital Minna.

Judge Abdul Imam, who rejected Bello’s bail application and ordered that he be remanded in prison to allow police complete their investigation, adjourned the case to October 6.

Bello’s detention came barely a week after he was granted temporary reprieve by a civil court in the Nigerian capital Abuja where he filed a petition against local chiefs and Muslim leaders who threatened to banish him if he failed to divorce 82 of his wives.

The preacher said the threats violated his right to life and personal liberty. The court gave Bello temporary protection from banishment, but the Niger State Sharia Commission decided on Monday to charge him at an Islamic court.

Bello had received a number of death threats after the Nigerian media began reporting on his unusual marital situation, his spokesman said.

Some newspapers said earlier in September that Bello had agreed at a meeting with local officials to divorce all but four of his wives and had asked for time to return them to their families.

But his spokesman later denied the reports and said the preacher intended to marry more wives instead.

His case has stirred controversy in Africa’s most populous nation of 140 million people, roughly half of whom are Muslim. Many Muslim scholars say Islam allows men to have up to four wives at any given time who must be treated equally.

Dd you know that a marriage in Saudi Arabia could end just because a husband wanted to see his wife’s face?

That’s what happened in the village of Khamis Mushayt when a man who’d been married to his 50 year old wife for 30 years decided to peek at his wife’s face under her veil as she slept. The man apologized stating he’d never do such a thing again, but she wants a divorce.

The customs of the village dictate that the marriage is now contaminated since he saw her face.

I know these are their customs, but I don’t really blame the man for wanting to have a look at the woman he’d been married to for 30 years. I certainly can’t imagine being married to someone and never seeing their full face.

Bruce McMahan, in 2004 at the age of 65, whose success with his McMahan Securities hedge fund in the 1990s made him one of America’s wealthiest men, married perhaps unofficially his own daughter who had been born of a 1968 McMahan fling following a two-year affair.

All of this information is accorded to a September report in Florida’s Broward-Palm Beach New Times, based on court documents generated when the daughter sought a break-up.

McMahan denied the affair and the marriage, but New Times found, among other things, many wedding photos and marriage-acknowledging e-mails, and reference to a vibrator laden with “evidence.” All lawsuits relating to the matter were settled, and the files sealed by the court, in early September.

Hmm a vibrator laden with evidence? Father and daughter must have had an active sex life.