Some Muslims in U.S. Quietly Engage in Polygamy

Source: npr

Although polygamy is illegal in the U.S. and most mosques try to discourage plural marriages, some Muslim men in America have quietly married multiple wives.

No one knows how many Muslims in the U.S. live in polygamous families. But according to academics researching the issue, estimates range from 50,000 to 100,000 people.

You can see some of the women involved in polygamous marriages in the lobby of Sanctuary for Families, a nonprofit women's center in New York City. It bursts with color as a dozen women in bright African dresses and head wraps gather for a weekly noon meeting for West African immigrants. The women come each week to this support group where they discuss hard issues, such as domestic abuse, medical problems, immigration hurdles and polygamy.

Polygamy is freely practiced in parts of Africa, and almost every one of the women in the group has experienced polygamy firsthand – either as a wife in a plural marriage or having been raised in families with one father who has two or more wives.

Group member Sarah says that in her native Guinea, the husband springs it on his wife that he's going to marry someone else. Sarah, like the others interviewed for this story, would give only her first name.

"Sometimes he say, 'OK, I am going to be married tomorrow,' or 'I'm going to be married today.' He's going ask you like that. It happened to me," she says.

Sarah begins to cry. Others nod in sympathy. These women are all Muslim. The Koran states that men may marry up to four women. The Prophet Mohammad had multiple wives.

But there's a restriction, says Sally, another group member. The husband cannot favor one woman over another – with his wealth or his heart.

"You have to love them the same way, share everything the same way, equally," says Sally. "Nobody can do that. It's impossible."

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Personally, I think this s/b legal as long as everyone involved is an adult and U.S. laws apply in cases of divorce or domestic violence.

THAT guy regrets the day he got himself outnumbered!

What can the divorce apparatus do for people who are not legally married?

Also, because these relationships usually occur under scrupulous isolation, it is very difficult for women to seek protection from abuse. If the rights of the women involved can be adequately protected, I have no problem with polygamous arrangements, but in too many situations that is not the case.

I once sat on the bus next to an East African immigrant woman whose father had had 8 wives (no more than 4 at any one time) and 50 children! Even after he divorced her mother and she and her mother and brother moved from Sudan to Kenya, he retained all of the rights of a father, including the right to perform her marriage to a groom of his choice, which he did (she and the husband now live in the U.S.). She seemed quite close to her father and said she talked with him on the phone from the U.S. regularly.

Mona, a Palestinian woman with six children from her first marriage, is happy to be a second wife. When Mona got divorced in 1990, she became a pariah in her conservative Muslim community in Patterson, N.J.

"When ladies divorce," she says, "the people look down on her — looking to her like second class."

Then 14 years ago, a man approached her to be his second wife. She resisted at first but then grew to admire him and agreed to become his wife. She says her problems evaporated.

"When I married the second husband, everybody's OK," she says, smiling. "If I go anywhere, I'm free, nobody talks, because I have a husband."

He provides for both of his families, and he divides time between the two homes. Mona says the first wife was initially angry, but she got used to it.

"What is the problem? If he is not happy with the first marriage, why he stay all the life like this? You know, my religion is good because it gives man and woman another chance to be happy."

NPR is not revealing Mona's last name, and her husband would not be interviewed for this story. Her husband could be charged with bigamy.

Sad. So much for cultural conditioning.

Common Law Marriage is the Law. If a man has more than one female living with him are the females cohabiting considered legal wives? If so, does that not constitute Bigamy, which is a Felony in most States?

Generally it involves a declaration that the couple in question is married, which only takes effect seven years later if they in fact live together as husband and wife during that period. YMMV by state. The couple must endeavor to live as such and present themselves as married to the community. Most states, I think, wouldn't presume to enforce a marriage unless a couple pushed to be treated as married and presented sufficient evidence that they met the prerequisites. Once a man had one wife, by license or at common law, I don't see why a state would allow him to acquire another by common law.