An Australian Islamic leader has announced that polygamous marriages should be recognised by the Australian government. Keysar Trad from the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia said that polygamous relationships in the Muslim community should be legalised. He said this would make things safer for Muslim women.
He said, “If this woman has wilfully chosen to enter into this relationship and make a lifelong commitment to this person to be married, it shouldn’t matter. If it was a business and the business had four partners we’d recognise that, but why don’t we recognise it when it comes to consensual relationships amongst adults?”
His thoughts were echoed by Sheikh Khalil Chami of the Islamic Welfare Centre in Sydney who also said polygamous marriages should be recognised in Australia.
This raises what many consider to be the two major assaults on the Judeo-Christian West today: the push for sharia law, and the push to redefine the institution of marriage. Both are major areas of concern, and both must be fiercely resisted.
The first is the ongoing push to make sharia law the law of the land in Australia and around the Western world. All true Muslims want to see the rule of Allah spread throughout the earth, and want all infidels to submit to his laws. And bit by bit we see the encroachment of sharia law in Western nations. It of course does not help when Christian leaders such as the Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams says that this is inevitable, at least partially.
Increasingly Western societies are ceding freedoms in order to placate Muslim minorities. And given the fact that Muslims tend to have larger families than non-Muslims, many are predicting that Muslim majorities will rule in many Western nations before the century is out. Indeed, one recent headline put it this way: “Britain to be an Islamic State by 2038”.
The move to legalise Muslim polygamy is just part of the greater spread of Islam throughout the Western world. At the moment it does not look like much is standing in the way of this continuing to gain momentum.
Of course the other alarming feature of this is the war on marriage. For years we have been battling various attacks on the institution of marriage. When there was debate over allowing de facto relationships to have similar status to married couples, pro-family forces warned this would be the thin edge of the wedge, and that the next thing you know, there will be demands for same-sex relationship recognition. Of course they were laughed out of court.
And when same-sex unions were recognised, pro-family forces said the next logical step will be to legalise polygamy. We too were ridiculed and mocked for suggesting such things. But one simply has to google the word polyamory to see this is no laughing matter.
There are voices all over the world – including academics, lawyers and other elites – calling for the recognition of group love and/or group marriage. Indeed, if we accept the logic of same-sex marriage, then the logic of polygamy is identical.
Both involve adults freely entering into a sexual relationship. It is consensual union, they will argue, and hurting no one else. So why not? The case for polygamy is based on the very same premises as the case for same-sex marriage. And if Muslims are now arguing for it, it seems that it is just a matter of time before the entire institution of heterosexual marriage is cast onto the scrapheap of history.
Of course Muslim men today in Australia do have up to four wives, as they are allowed in the Koran. And many of these extra wives are already getting government (that is, taxpayer funded) benefits already, especially in the Sydney area.
And Muslim men think this is fine. One newspaper account says this: “Mr Trad’s mother was a third wife in a polygamous relationship overseas and he said the women had admiration and respect for each other and supported each other.” Most women in polygamous affairs would beg to differ.
Most Muslim women despise such arrangements, and usually there is one woman that is singled out for special treatment by the husband, while the other three languish. It is this inequality of love and affection which makes polygamy so miserable for the majority of women involved in it. Jealousy, tensions and strife are common in such scenarios.
Polygamy is all about the lusts of the males, but not the wellbeing of the females. Right now polygamy is illegal in Australia. To legalise it will not only set in cement the misery many Muslim women already experience, but it will be a further nail in the coffin to heterosexual marriage, and the near universal principle of one man, one woman for life.
It remains to be seen how well received this recommendation will be. Many politicians are already overly sensitive to, and worried about, Muslim feelings. Thus many might be tempted to go along with this idea. And the fact of political correctness, along with the homosexual war on marriage, will simply add more pressure for this sort of idea to gain further currency amongst our ruling elites.
The war against marriage has just got even more intense. What is needed more than ever are leaders with common sense, guts and principle to make a stand before it is too late. Whether such leaders still exist is the question of the hour.
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