That Polygamy Thing…

Daniel Pipes: “Westerners welcome harems”

And the best Western politicians can do for those Westerners who frown upon Muslim polygamy is to tell them “find a way to live with it” — you know, be more “open-minded,” “tolerant,” “multi-cultural.”

* Your taxpayer dollars at work:

“Westerners welcome harems,” by Daniel Pipes for the Washington Times, December 7 (thanks to Jeffrey Imm): read the comments on Dhimmi Watch too, priceless!

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 license 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 polygyny (one man married to more than one woman). Estimates find 2,000 or more British polygamous men, 14,000-20,000 harems in Italy, 30,000 harems in France, and 50,000-100,000 polygamists in the United States.[…]

Social acceptance is also growing. Academics justify it, while politicians blithely meet with polygamists or declare 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. (For fuller details, see my blog, “Harems Accepted in the West.”) 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.

— 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 pounds ($140) a week in social benefits, and each multiculturally named “additional spouse” receives 33.65 pounds. The Treasury states. “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…