A former Cambridge student has revealed how she dropped out of her PhD to enter a polygamous marriage in an upcoming Channel 4 documentary.

Nabilah Phillips, one of the subjects of The Men With Many Wives, married Hasan Phillips, a businessman in North London, becoming his second of three wives and bearing two children of his six. Mr Phillips spends three nights with each wife before moving onto the next, as all three live in different homes in London and Birmingham.

Mrs Phillips sought out a married man after a previous marriage ended in divorce, using Muslim Marriage Event, a matchmaking service based in East London. Speaking to Channel 4, Mrs Phillips said: “I’d rather be in a polygamous marriage with someone who knows how to be around, than with someone I don’t know where he is.”

Having abandoned her PhD in engineering for marriage and motherhood, Mrs Phillips also began to wear the niqab and abaya at her husband’s request. She told the Radio Times that she had wanted to wear the full veil before her marriage and that “being married to Hasan has given me the opportunity to wear one and be steady at it.” She added that the only prejudice she has received regarding it and the marriage has been from other Muslims.

Mrs Phillips told the programme: “I really enjoy being in a polygamous relationship. We are not stupid people who are forced into this type of relationship.” It is estimated that there are over 20,000 such relationships currently existing among the UK’s Muslim minority.

The Phillips’s arrangement is legally unrecognised: attempting to enter into a second legal marriage constitutes the crime of bigamy under the law of England and Wales, carrying a possible sentence of up to seven years on conviction. However, going through a ceremony that does not purport to be a marriage at law is not illegal.

In contrast to UK law, Islamic jurisprudence permits a man to take up to four wives, a practice properly called polygyny. The reverse, polyandry, where a woman takes many husbands, is not allowed. Many countries with Muslim majorities, such as Tunisia and Turkey, have banned the polygamy despite the religious position; meanwhile, in Mrs Phillips’s birth country of Malaysia, recent changes to the law have made polygyny easier to perform.

UK law has for some time recognized polygamous marriages performed abroad for reasons of welfare calculation. However his was abolished by the 2014 Pensions Act, which will enter into force on April 6th, 2016.

Mrs Phillips, the Women’s Campaign and the Islamic Society could not be reached for comment. The Men With Many Wives will be broadcast on Channel 4 at 10pm on Wednesday 24th September.