North America: Non-Muslim Polygamous Marriages
10/04/2008: In the United States and Canada, about 37,000 people live in polygamous marriages. (Kingston Whig Standard)
"The hundreds of women and children from a Texas polygamist compound shown streaming onto school buses over the weekend are the latest public face of polygamy. But they're hardly the first.
The secretive communities of people with multiple marriages, usually religious, have had plenty of unwanted attention in recent years. Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, who built the compound, is already awaiting trial. And the HBO show Big Love depicts a polygamist family in Utah. For all that attention, it appears the number of people in polygamist communities has actually increased.
Polygamist marriages have been growing steadily since the 1800s, says Mary Batchelor, acting director of Principle Voices, a non-profit group that advocates for Utah decriminalizing polygamy. She says most polygamists are living within the general population. "You wouldn't be able to tell them apart from anyone else," she says.
There is no census data on polygamy, but Principle Voices estimates that there are 37,000 people, including children, who live in polygamy in the western United States and British Columbia. That's up from 30,000 in 2000, according to the group's informal survey of fundamentalist groups and independent fundamentalist families.
The largest known organized community is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, headed by Jeffs. That group, with about 8,000 members, broke from the Mormon church after the latter disavowed polygamy more than a century ago.
Most members of the fundamentalist group live in Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Ariz., though they have been moving to other locations, says Batchelor. The polygamists say Joseph Smith, Mormonism's founder, was instructed to reintroduce the practice of polygamy into his family and his community.
Members of the Bountiful colony, located in southeastern B.C., also belong to a breakaway sect of the Mormon church and believe that in order to get into heaven, men must marry as many women as possible. There are also Christian and Muslim polygamists in the United States, along with immigrants from places where polygamy is common, such as certain areas of Africa.
While marriage to more than one person is illegal, enforcement varies from state to state, says Linda McClain, a professor at Boston University School of Law.
It's the underage cases that catch the most law enforcement attention.
In Canada, the B.C. government was urged this week to ask the B.C. Court of Appeal to decide whether criminal laws against polygamy are constitutional and able to withstand a challenge that multiple marriages fall under the right to freedom of religion.
In the U.S., Jeffs is awaiting trial for four counts each of incest and sexual conduct with a minor stemming from two arranged marriages between teenage girls and their older male relatives."
wluml.org
********************************************************
...............There is a two step process that Muslim men must take to get a second wife. 1) To convince the current wife that they can get a second wife and 2) To convince a new woman that she should be the second wife. Like I said, most men use religion to accomplish step one. Step two is accomplished in other ways.
In an amazing book by Nikos Kazantzakis called Zorba the Greek, Zorba, the main character, explains to his friend, that he gets so much play compared to any other man alive, because his first and singular target are widows. These are women, he explains, that aren't given much attention to in society, and thus, the perfect targets. In the case of American-Muslim second-wife-seeking-men, their target are widows and divorcees. The ideal time for a man to move to capture a second-wife is right after the death of her husband, or right after her divorce. In the world today, older Muslim women, on the whole, are not used to being without a husband. The moment they are without a man, they feel almost naked. Since they have long lived under the protective shelter of a (patriarchal) man, they, quite often, agree to any sort of shelter, even if it comes in the form of a man who already has a wife. Widows and divorcees are lured in by the man by his promises to take care of them. Little do they realize that the situation they are entering will turn out to be horrible.
But women come to be snared in other ways. After all, not all girls who become second or third wives are divorcees or widows. Some are converts. To me, the phenomenon of convert women acquiescing to polygamy is the most interesting one. In fact, some of the strongest proponents of polygamy I've met have been converts to Islam. I found this so fascinating that I tried to get to the root of this phenomenon. Here is the explanation that I have reached: Many converts come from Christianity, and an American cultural milieu, which defines Islam as part of the East, and as different. When these women actually convert to Islam, its because they are sick and tired of the West, and thus, LIKE to believe the fact that Islam is "Eastern." These women want to be Eastern - their logic works like this: Since the West has always treated me like crap, the opposite of West must be utopia! Persuant to such logic, then, they embrace polygamy because it is the clearest expression of Eastern relationships. Such women only have to be found, they don't need convincing.
Still, there are some girls who are neither widows, nor divorcees, nor converts. Yet they too end up becoming second or third wives. How? The answer: Pity and a need for self-worth. Some women grow up depressed, have always been mistreated, or are just plain lonely. The only time they feel good about themselves is when they are helping someone else. Now you know women like this. At college, these are those girls that come into where the boys are sitting, take everyone's order for what they want from McDonalds and then go and buy food for everyone; and they don't just do this once, they do it all the time.
Doing stuff for others makes them feel needed; and being needed gives them self-affirmation. When a man who wants a second wife come across such women, all the men have to say to them is "Dear Bla Bla, my life with my current wife has been quite miserable. We do not click at the intimacy level. I was forced to marry her to make my mother happy. I really wish I was given the opportunity to be an individual and to pick my own wife! I pick you! But alas, I cannot divorce her because she's realiant on me. The only option is for you to be my second wife!" Women who have for too long served other people, want, out of pity, and their own need, to help this poor guy out. And quiet often, acquiesce into becoming his second wife. They don't realize how horribly they have been manipulated. The sad truth is that they have, almost throughout their whole life, been manipulated like this.
eteraz.wordpress.com
**********************************************************
Big Love"?: HBO Skips True Polygamy in Islamic U.S.
By Debbie Schlussel
HBO's new show, "Big Love," is getting a lot of hype. Airing in the prized post-Soprano's slot on Sundays at 10 p.m. Eastern, the show is about a lapsed Mormon in suburban Salt Lake City who has three wives and families.
But while the Mormon Church banned the practice of polygamy in 1890, another religion continues to encourage it to this day. Hint: It begins with an I, ends with an M, and has an S-L-A in the middle.
If you think men with four wives only happens in Utah, think again. If you think that, with Muslims, it only happens in some desert emirate over in the Middle East, also think again.
The fact is there are Muslim men with multiple wives living everywhere in America. But unlike the Mormons--most of whom don't practice polygamy anymore--Muslims with multiple wives aren't subject to ridicule, like HBO shows or Jay Leno jokes. And they aren't prosecuted, like Mormon Tom Green was.
biglovehbo.jpgwomeninhijabs.jpg
HBO's Fictional "Big Love"; America's Real, Growing "Big Love"
There are Muslim polygamist men living not far from me in the Detroit area. They have one wife, to whom they were married in the eyes of the State, and several to whom they are married in the eyes of the mosque. While our government recognizes these marriages for Muslims, it enforces polygamy laws against everyone else. In Dearborn, Michigan--Islamic America' nucleus--statutory rape cases have been dismissed on the grounds that there was a marriage (of a 14-year-old girl! in one case) in the eyes of the mosque.
Here's a quote from Islamic commentator Hassan Hathout:
We American Muslims are subject to American law and we have the right of objection only if the law forces us to do something against Islam. . . . When an American Muslim takes a second wife (as is rumored to be the practice of some Islamic centers), the second wife is denied her "legal" proof of marriage, and will essentially be kept as a hidden or secret wife.
This is a huge drain on Infidel society, because there have been instances where Muslim polygamist marriages have been used to foment mortgage and bank fraud, as well as Medicaid fraud. In addition, the multiple wives are usually an excuse to milk the system, whether it's Medicaid or Aid to Families with Dependent Children or WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) aid.
But when it comes to Islamic polygamy on our shores, neither law enforcement--nor feminists constantly griping about exclusive golf clubs--are lifting a finger. While the Utah and Arizona Attorney Generals' offices investigate and issue reports about Christian polygamy in their states, not a word from their Michigan counterpart. The double standard is clear.
So where's HBO's "Big Islamic Love" show? Don't hold your breath. Only Christians need apply for the scorn. Muslims . . . totally off limits.
debbieschlussel.com |
