By David J. Rusin
Presidential
candidate Rick Santorum got jeered for comparing the legalization of
same-sex marriage to that of polygamy, but, whether or not the
comparison is rationally sound, thoughts of the former’s facilitating
the latter bring a smile to many Islamists. If the definition of
marriage can evolve in terms of gender, some Muslims ask, why not in
terms of number?
Islam sanctions polygamy — more specifically, polygyny — allowing
Muslim men to keep up to four wives at once. Though marrying a second
woman while remaining married to the first is prohibited across the
Western world, including all 50 U.S. states, a Muslim can circumvent the
law by wedding one woman in a government-recognized marriage and
joining with others in unlicensed religious unions devoid of legal
standing.
As Muslims have grown more numerous in the West, so too have Muslim
polygamists. France, home to the largest Islamic population in Western
Europe, was estimated in 2006 to host 16,000 to 20,000 polygamous
families — almost all Muslim — containing 180,000 total people,
including children. In the United States, such Muslims may have already
reached numerical parity with their fundamentalist-Mormon counterparts;
as many as 100,000 Muslims reside in multi-wife families, and the
phenomenon has gained particular traction among black Muslims.
The increasingly prominent profile of Islamic polygamy in the West has inspired a range of accommodations. Several governments now recognize plural marriages contracted lawfully in immigrants’ countries of origin. In the United Kingdom, these polygamous men are eligible to receive extra welfare benefits — an arrangement that some government ministers hope to kill — and a Scottish court once permitted a Muslim who had been cited for speeding to retain his driver’s license because he had to commute between his wives.
The increasingly prominent profile of Islamic polygamy in the West has inspired a range of accommodations. Several governments now recognize plural marriages contracted lawfully in immigrants’ countries of origin. In the United Kingdom, these polygamous men are eligible to receive extra welfare benefits — an arrangement that some government ministers hope to kill — and a Scottish court once permitted a Muslim who had been cited for speeding to retain his driver’s license because he had to commute between his wives.
The ultimate accommodation would involve placing polygamous and
monogamous marriages on the same legal footing, but Islamists have been
relatively quiet on this front, a silence that some attribute to
satisfaction with the status quo or a desire to avoid drawing negative
publicity. There have, of course, been exceptions. The Muslim Parliament
of Great Britain made waves in 2000 about challenging the U.K.’s ban on
polygamy, but little came of it. In addition, two of Australia’s most
influential Islamic figures called for recognition of polygamous unions
several years ago.
With the legal definition of marriage expanding in various U.S.
states, as it has in other nations, should we anticipate rising demands
that we recognize polygamous marriages?
Debra Majeed, an academic
apologist for Islamic polygamy, has tried to downplay such concerns,
claiming that “opponents of same-sex unions, rather than proponents of
polygyny as practiced by Muslims, are the usual sources of arguments
that a door open to one would encourage a more visible practice of the
other.” Yet some American Muslims apparently did not get the memo.
Because off-the-cuff remarks can be the most revealing, consider a
tweet by Moein Khawaja, executive director of the Philadelphia branch of
the radical Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). After New
York legalized same-sex marriage last June, Khawaja expressed what many
Islamists must have been thinking: “Easy to support gay marriage today
bc it’s mainstream. Lets see same people go to bat for polygamy, its the
same argument. *crickets*”
The “same argument” theme is fleshed out in an October 2011 piece titled “Polygamy: Tis the Season?” in the Muslim Link,
a newspaper serving the Washington and Baltimore areas. “There are
murmurs among the polygamist community as the country moves toward the
legalization of gay marriage,” it explains. “As citizens of the United
States, they argue, they should have the right to legally marry whoever
they please, or however many they please.”
The story quotes several
Muslim advocates of polygamy. “As far as legalization, I think they
should,” says Hassan Amin, a Baltimore imam who performs polygamous
religious unions. “We should strive to have it legalized because Allah
has already legalized it.”
Again and again the article connects the normalization of same-sex
marriage and Islamic polygamy. “As states move toward legalizing gay
marriage, the criminalization of polygamy is a seemingly striking
inconsistency in constitutional law,” it asserts. “Be it gay marriage or
polygamous marriage, the rights of the people should not be based on
their popularity but rather on the constitutional laws that are meant to
protect them.”
According to a survey carried out by the Link, polygamy
suffers from no lack of popularity among American Muslims. Thirty-nine
percent reported their intention to enter polygamous marriages if it
becomes legal to do so, and “nearly 70 percent said they believe that
the U.S. should legalize polygamy now that it is beginning to legalize
gay marriage.” Unfortunately, no details about the methodology or sample
size are provided, and in general quality data on Western Muslims’
views of polygamy are scarce and often contradictory. Results from a
recent poll of SingleMuslim.com users, many of whom live in the West,
show significant support for the religious institution of polygamy,
while findings from a more professional-looking survey of French Muslims
indicate little desire for legalization.
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