THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 313, November 26, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
WESTERNERS WELCOME HAREMS
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
ISLAMIC POLYGAMY VERSUS WESTERN MONOGAMY: ISLAMIST LAWFARE AGAINST THE WESTERN INSTITUTION
OF MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE -- MONOGAMY IN THE WEST SILENTLY ERODING UNDER THE CHALLENGE OF MUSLIM
IMMIGRATION, ISLAMIC LAW, & ISLAMIST SUBVERSION -- WESTERN NATION-STATES SURRENDERING THEIR ECONOMIC,
CULTURAL, & POLITICAL HERITAGE THROUGH EFFORTS TO ACCOMODATE & APPEASE THEIR GROWING MUSLIM
IMMIGRANT & CONVERT POPULATIONS
FULL STORY:
A Scottish judge recently bent the law to benefit a polygamous household. The case involved a Muslim male who drove
64 miles per hour in a 30 mph zone – usually grounds for an automatic loss of one's driving license. The defendant's
lawyer explained his client's need to speed:
"He has one wife in Motherwell and another in Glasgow
and sleeps with one one night and stays with the other
the next on an alternate basis. Without his driving
licence, he would be unable to do this on a regular
basis."
Sympathetic to the polygamist's plight, the judge permitted him to retain his license.
Monogamy, this ruling suggests, long a foundation of Western civilization, is silently eroding under the challenge of
Islamic law. Should current trends continue, polygamy could soon be commonplace.
Since the 1950s, Muslim populations have grown in Western Europe and North America via immigration and conversion;
with their presence has grown the Islamic form of polygamy (one man married to more than one woman). Estimates find
2,000 or more British polygamous men, 14,000 or 15,000-20,000 harems in Italy, 30,000 harems in France, and 50,000-100,000
polygamists in the United States.
Some imams openly acknowledge conducting polygamous marriage ceremonies: Khalil Chami reports that he is asked
almost weekly to conduct such ceremonies in Sydney. Aly Hindy reports having "blessed" more than 30 such nuptials in
Toronto.
Social acceptance is also growing. Academics justify it, while politicians blithely meet with polygamists or declare that
Westerners should "find a way to live with it" and journalists describe polygamy with empathy, sympathy, and
compassion. Islamists argue polygamy's virtues and call for its official recognition.
Polygamy has made key legal advances in 2008. At least six Western jurisdictions now permit harems, on the condition
that these were contracted in jurisdictions where polygamy is legal, including India and Muslim-majority countries from
Indonesia to Saudi Arabia to Morocco.
The United Kingdom: Bigamy is punishable by up to seven years in jail, but the law recognizes harems already
formed in polygamy-tolerant countries. The Department of Work and Pensions pays couples up to £92.80 (US$140) a week
in social benefits, and each multiculturally-named "additional spouse" receives £33.65. The Treasury states that "Where a
man and a woman are married under a law which permits polygamy, and either of them has an additional spouse, the Tax
Credits (Polygamous Marriages) Regulations 2003 allow them to claim tax credits as a polygamous unit." Additionally,
harems may be eligible for additional housing benefits to reflect their need for larger properties.
The Netherlands: The Dutch Justice Minister, Ernst Hirsch Ballin, has announced that polygamous Muslim
marriages should not be dealt with through the legal system, but via dialogue.
Belgium: The Constitutional Court took steps to ease the reunification of harems formed outside the country.
Italy: A court in Bologna allowed a Muslim male immigrant to bring the mothers of his two children into the
country on the grounds that the polygamous marriages had been legally contracted.
Australia: The Australian newspaper reports:
". . . it is illegal to enter into a polygamous marriage. But the
federal government, like Britain, recognises relationships
that have been legally recognised overseas, including
polygamous marriages. This allows second wives and
children to claim welfare and benefits."
Ontario, Canada: Canadian law calls for polygamy to be punished by a prison term, but the Ontario Family Law Act
accepts "a marriage that is actually or potentially polygamous, if it was celebrated in a jurisdiction whose system of law
recognizes it as valid."
Thus, for the cost of two airplane tickets, Muslims potentially can evade Western laws. (One wonders when Mormons will
also wake to this gambit.) Rare countries (such as Ireland) still reject harems; generally, as David Rusin of Islamist
Watch notes, "governments tend to look the other way as the conjugal mores of Seventh-Century Arabia … take root
in our backyards."
At a time when Western marriage norms are already under challenge, Muslims are testing legal loopholes and even seeking
taxpayer support for multiple brides. This development has vast significance: just as the concept of one man, one woman
marriage has shaped the West's economic, cultural and political development, the advance of Islamic law (Shari‘a) will
profoundly change life as we know it.
© Daniel Pipes 2008
Originally Published in the Jerusalem Post, November 26, 2008
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, November 26, 2008
Article URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/6022
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Lawfare -- The Use of Law as a Weapon in War & Politics:
Islamist Lawfare & the "Legal" Jihad Against America & the West
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is the Founder and Director of the Middle East Forum,
the Founder of Campus Watch, a signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S.
Institute of Peace, a former adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the
U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and
Technology, and a former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the
University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for Front Page Magazine, the New York
Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and developments in the Middle East
have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington Post, the New York Times,
and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network television, as well as at universities and
think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on
BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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