Author: Andrew Bolt
Publication: Herald Sun
Date: June 27, 2008
URL: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23928410-5000117,00.html
We haven't heard the last of this call by
Muslim leaders for the right to polygamy.
After all, how can a society that's moving
to give a man the right to marry another man then refuse a man the right to
marry two women?
Give way on gay marriage, you must give way
on polygamy. In both cases it's about consenting adults, right?
So I couldn't blame the sheiks who thought
it was time this week to demand we change our laws to make polygamy legal.
Sheik Khalil Chami, of the Islamic Welfare
Centre in Lakemba, said we already had Muslims in polygamous marriages here,
and should protect them with legal status.
These weren't just polygamists who had somehow
slipped through immigration checks, either: "There are a lot of sheiks
here . . . (who) conduct that marriage no problem at all."
Chami soon had backers. Sheik Isse Musse of
Werribee mosque said Melbourne had some 20 polygamous families from Africa,
mainly Somalis and mainly refugees. The second wives deserved to have their
marriages recognised so they weren't seen as having sex outside wedlock but,
alas, "the Australian law is unfortunate".
Keysar Trad, translator for the former mufti
of Australia and head of the Islamic Friendship Society, agreed, saying he'd
even proposed to a second wife. And the current Mufti, Sheik Fehmi Naji el-Imam,
said this was an issue for the Australian National Council of Imams to discuss.
And relax, crooned Yasser Soliman, one of
the Muslim advisers handpicked by then prime minister John Howard: "I
don't think it should be discussed in terms of any threat to the Australian
way of life."
Except, of course, that it is.
It's not just a threat in the obvious way,
being a challenge to the way we regard women in this country.
Women have slowly, painfully won the right
to be considered equal to men in status and freedoms. Do we betray that ideal
now by approving a form of union in which women are inevitably subservient?
It's no coincidence, after all, that these
sheiks are utterly against giving women the equal right in turn to several
husbands. And you need only hear Trad argue for polygamy to suspect they feel
a woman's place is under a man, literally.
Trad this week said he'd proposed to a second
woman because he'd fallen in love and thought it sinful to commit adultery.
His wife, Hanifa, said she'd approved, because it would mean "having
(sex) in the right way instead of having it like go to a prostitute . . ."
A second wife as a prostitute substitute?
How could any woman resist such a sweet offer? No wonder Trad's proposal was
turned down.
Six years ago, in another interview, Hanifa
made even plainer the humiliation of such a deal, saying she'd only agreed
to her husband taking a second wife because "we were having a terrible
time . . . He fell in love and I wasn't thinking about myself."
In fact, that profile of the Trads also hinted
at the deeper danger to "the Australian way of life" posed by polygamy.
Keysar Trad then had nine children and no
steady job, relying on low-income support from government. He could not maintain
his own family on his own, yet still was asking another woman to join his
tribe.
In fact, I suspect that behind these new calls
for the legalising of polygamous Muslim marriages is a need for the taxpayers'
support that would flow with it.
It's largely for that very reason that Britain
this year agreed to formally recognise polygamous relationships, almost all
of Muslims, allowing second wives to claim income support of around $80 a
week.
Given the poverty of so many such families,
this means British taxpayers will now be funding marriage arrangements many
will think unhealthy, if not immoral or even alien.
That isn't a reaction the Left can simply
dismiss as plain bigotry, to be ignored or tackled with some "awareness"
campaign. There is actually a moral issue here: should taxpayers support relationships
that necessarily make women the underlings of men?
But there is also this to consider: here is
yet another wedge to split us into tribes. After all, communities are formed
by a shared morality, and a sense that we may each expect from others what
others expect from us.
But what if those others expect from us help
we feel is wrong to give, and which we would never dream of demanding ourselves?
That doesn't just break down trust and a sense
of community, it destroys our support for the welfare state that needs our
cash to exist. Is that what the Left really wants?
No, multiculturalism is cute when it's all
souvlakis and fiestas, but here is one ethnic custom that must make way for
our own. Marriage is between one man and one woman, people.
For your own good, and ours, and above all
the children's, we must insist on that.
